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Saturday, May 26, 2018

Hard, hard day for a mouse

I woke yesterday to a stiff battle of thumps from the other end of the house. No noise except fierce swats contacting......something. I went on down and asked "You OK in there?" Thwat! Whump! I pushed the door. It opened some inches, before jamming over clothing. Apparently an entire wardrobe. Underwear, socks, leggins. I saw a foot shift the load.


"There is a mouse in here! I WILL KILL IT!" She got up only to use the bathroom, and a mouse ran past her shoulder, up the shower curtain. She spent an hour sealing herself in and doing battle.

I suggested there is a more adult method of dispatching a mouse. "A mouse trap?" she meekly inquired. I suggested she take the debit card for a ride to Ace Hardware and purchase a couple. "You remember how to get there?" Sniff, sniff. "Up Barlow?" So, she went for a mouse trap.


She has a friendly and handsome classmate who works there. He makes it a point of waiting on her. She hates it, and calls him Bub. I think his name is Devon. "Bub said I only need two," as she dumped four traps on the counter.


With minimal finger snapping, she baited, set and placed all four. And so the day went on. At bedtime, a scream from down there, and I went to investigate. Her mouse (so now it's my mouse!) lay expiring in the corner, dying not of mouse trap, but apparently of severe domestic abuse in the morning.

"You need to finish it off," I said. "Leaving it to die is unfair." She closed her eyes and dropped a two pound bottle of Listerine straight down. That was that, except for the clean up. The mouse body was scooped onto a lovely gift bag and carried out.


Remains were returned to the sewer line replacement project out back. The mouse probably would have led a happy summer life in the back yard if not for the terror of men with shovels digging holes. I'm sure he went straight up the skirting, into a ventilation duct and out in Laura's room.

We threw away the mouse traps.

39 comments:

  1. Ew! Those men need to get the job done, pronto!

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  2. Mac handles all critter demo all or destruction. I always encourage destruction.

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  3. Laura will ta kle just about anything. You go girl!

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  4. There's always a third option, humane trapping and releasing :)

    I sure hope you don't get any more visitors, for everyone's sake! Poor Laura, poor you, poor mouse!

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    1. Not me, dear, dear Jenny. Any mouse that comes in my house better know how to get back out. But I swear, I would not shoot it!
      From her description of the prior battle of an hour or more, I figured I had a mortally wounded creature on hand. I don't have the stomach to dispatch it, so I sent her for a mouse trap. Next time, probably a live trap and a quick escape.

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  5. Hari OM
    Yeah, gotta admit, I'd be going the humane way, but that's personal choice. Bravo Laura for tackling it yourself. Just a thought... where one was, others may be. Traps are small enough to store. Jus' in case... YAM xx

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  6. That's rough, hope you don't have others. Mice are uncanny.

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  7. Laura is a brave girl! I’m embarrassed to tell you how I would’ve reacted. :)

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  8. This brings me back to my childhood. I had to dispose of dead mice quite frequently. These days I would find it very hard to dispose of even one but they are all over the place these days. I hope the dead mouse and those traps will do the trick for you.

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  9. I usually use a live trap baited with peanut butter...then wonder what to do with a live mouse with a tummy full of pb. Maybe ask Bub about that one lol.

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  10. "Death by Listerine" -- that would be a great title for the novel Laura will write as an adult. Personally, I would have kept the traps just in case another mouse ever shows up.

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  11. Thank you for telling Laura that she needed to finish the job.
    I have a resident furry trapper, but he is getting old and lazy. Like the other household inhabitants.

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    1. I forgot the part where Toby was introduced to the scene, and sat down to watch.

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  12. We had a mouse enter thru the doggie door. It went into my spare bedroom/computer room. An occasionally 'eeekk!!' would tell me the mouse was still alive but could never find it. One day, while browsing on the computer, I heard a rustle in the waste basket under the desk. I knew it was the mouse. I quickly gathered the basket liner into a bunch and lifted it out to find said mouse. I almost dropped the bag but steeled myself to hold the bag shut & screamed for my son who tied it quickly. We put the bag back in the waste basket and loaded onto bed of the truck into the desert where the bag was opened and said mouse escape into night. End of story.

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  13. She handled it the same way I would have :-)

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  14. Not an enjoyable task but I have executed many a mouse and chipmunk over the years. I'm sure the chipmunk killing might bother some but we were getting over run. Not that humans are very good at keeping the balance of hunted and hunter, but I do think we could use a few more natural predators around the suburbs. Cats are good at maintaining a low population of quickly reproducing mice.

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    1. When our outdoor cat expired, the cute little chipmunk became forty or fifty in a season. They quit running away; they smiled for the camera.

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  15. Although I like furry little creatures, mice can be extremely destructive. They chew wires which could cause electrical problems or fires. And they build tidy little nests in the inner workings of expensive riding lawnmowers which costs the owners much time and money. Our cats generally take care of mice, but we've also set traps in the past. If they stay outside, they live. Mind you, our one cat brings them in still very much alive. I think he's bringing them for us. -Jenn

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  16. You probably should have kept the traps for a little while. There's no telling how many more field mice will be scared indoors.

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    1. Actually, each was full of peanut butter. New ones next time.

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  17. We had two houses demolished right next door, and this was the first year I saw mice in my house. Now I am absolutely petrified of them, and before we knew it, they were in every room of our home. Sprinkled peppermint essential oil, sprayed Rodent BeGone, bought regular traps, electric traps, things to plug in the wall, and had super come an plug up the holes under the sink. Spent a small fortune on mouse-proof storage containers essentially leaving them with nothing to eat. Even dried the sink at night so they had no water. Keeping fingers crossed now that they are gone. Emma is right. As the exterminator told me, if you see one,you know there is more so be watchful.

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  18. I have kin in Oregon who dismiss mouse traps, poison, etc. They use a .22......in the house, oddly, there are several small holes in their hardwood floor thatthe aunts ignore.

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  19. oh, poor little field mouse but mice cannot be tolerated in the house. I hate to kill things and it hurts my heart to set traps but I do it all the same. here's a tip, next time place the baited trap in a paper bag, lunch size will do, when it catches it's prey, all the gory stuff is contained in the bag and you don't even need to look at the poor little smushed thing, just pick up the bag and throw it away. I had to actively kill a rat that had found it's way into the wall of the house several years ago. I had rats in the old city house and was not going to repeat that in the country house. it had the bad luck to make it's nest behind a removable panel in a closet that gave access to the plumbing on the other side of the wall. The only way I could get it was to stab it with a barbecue fork and drown it in a bucket of water, one of the most horrible things I have ever had to do. it turned out to be female so I consoled myself with the fact that it would not be raising babies in the walls of my house.

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    1. I remember that! Well, I've decided no more mice are allowed in the house, so that's that.

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  20. Use a pencil to snap those traps, scrub off PB under running water with an old toothbrush, dry in the sun and store those traps against future need.
    Can you cover the outside of the ventilation duct with wire mesh such as insect screen to prevent future mice from entering there?

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  21. no, no, no, that little mouse could have been captured and let outside, so sad, use a screen over the ventilation, clear it occasionally to be sure it isn't clogged.

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    1. the mice in my house were too clever to get caught in a live trap. they would set it off and I never caught a single one.

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  22. I have to buy peanut butter.I did not know that they like it.

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  23. Laura is my hero! Much braver than I would have been dealing with a mouse. Glad that its gone though!

    betty

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  24. We (as in Sue) keep two mouse traps in the garage year long. There are certain times of year when they decide that our home should become their home.

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  25. Y'all (to quote Ellen) made my day. The comic relief is fabulous; I'm laughing so hard tears are running down my face. At eight in the morning.

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    1. With 3 cats in the house, we never see any mice... and with the feral cats outside, there aren't any there either. Don't you have a cat? (Of course he may be like our three... wouldn't kill or eat anything but might play with it until it stops moving)

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    2. In the old house, when Ryon was still alive, the only mouse they got eventually fell over and played dead. The cats stood guard until someone got up, found it and threw it out by the tail. The mouse landed on its feet and ran off.

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  26. I've found the best way to get rid of a mouse is to open the front door. If it has any sense, it finds it and runs away.

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  27. Goodness, what an adventure. We have silverfish. LOL

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  28. The "kind" mousetraps are useless unless you only set the mice free on the next continent.
    Filling any mouseholes with steel wool makes it more difficult for them to get into the house in the first place.

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