Our only face-to-face confrontation came several weeks ago in the kitchen. The stare-down would have been laughable had his beady little eyes not been so… beady. I remember how he sat on the kitchen counter, glaring at me as if I had invaded his space. Unfortunately, I broke the stare down, turning my attention to a zipped baggie of chocolate chip cookies only a couple of feet away.
“Are you kidding me?” I said to the two-inch varmint. “You got into the cookies?”
My conversation continued for several minutes.
“The bottom line,” I’d said, “is that I don’t want you in the house. You wanna play under the house or in the yard? Have at it. But you are not to come in the house.Do I make myself clear?”
Then I gave him the look.
In my opinion, there is only one thing worse than having a mouse in the house. And we won’t even go there. The “other thing” is bad enough outside. And if I ever found one inside? Let’s just say there would been no conversation. After a blood-curdling scream, I would have promptly passed out, flat on the floor.
Anyway, being one who doesn’t always jump feet first into things I don’t want to deal with, I spent the next few days hoping our little talk had gotten to him. That he understood: stay out or I employ the traps.
But no. A few days later, tell-tale signs were too obvious to deny.
For Colton’s sake, as well as my own, we purchased live-catch traps.
Within 12 hours, we’d made our first catch. Colton even volunteered to release him back into the wild of the city. And so it went, as we did what any Mickey-Mouse-loving person would do.
“You’re free!” we told the rodent. “And don’t come back.”
We seemed to have made it through the next week or so mouse-free. Until Colton asked me to bring toilet paper for the downstairs bathroom. (The fact that Colton can use more toilet paper in one day than most people use in a month is another column.)
When I opened the door under my sink, what I discovered was shocking, to say the least: four brand new rolls of toilet paper, shredded into tiny bits. It appeared mice could go through as much toilet paper as Colton.
But I had bigger problems, now. Not only were the mice having a, uh, field day in my kitchen, they were invading the upstairs – and that’s a long way to go in mice miles.
Clearly, I would need a better plan. No more Ms. Nice to the Mice. This was war.
We made the trek back to the store and stared at the different traps. Glue traps were out. Effective? Yes. But then I still had to play executioner. Rat bait? I don’t think so. The last thing I want is dead mice rotting under the house. We had one option: neck-snappers.
“You can’t kill it, Mom!”
“Watch me.”
I found what appeared to be the perfect pair of snappers – if there is such a thing. They operated similar to a clothes pin. Once the mouse was ousted, all I had to do was release the pressure from the clip, and out the mouse would pop. Except that these wonder traps didn’t work. Both were broken. We never even got out of the gate with them. So we retired into the family room a couple hours before bedtime. About an hour later, we heard a noise in the kitchen.
“What was that, Mom?”
“No clue. Old houses tend to crack and creak from time to time,” I’d said.
Unless that wasn’t a crack or creak.
“That mouse better not be in there,” I said, walking into the kitchen. Colton followed, giggling in a way that left no doubt that he hoped it was a mouse – and we’d get to see it, up close and personal.
The only thing we saw was the baggie of brownies, chewed into and pushed onto the floor. And on the counter – a single mouse dropping.
He’d left his calling card.
The next day, I set out in search of the good, old-fashioned mouse traps. The rectangle of death, as I’m sure it’s known in the rodent world. I was in uncharted territory.
So much so that I called my male neighbor over to set the traps. He held them while I spread a small amount of peanut butter, right on the center of the trap. Then we set the traps, strategically placing them throughout the kitchen.
Part of me dreaded finding the half-decapitated mice. I quickly reminded myself I was at war. And I would do whatever I had to do in the name of a mouse-free house.
Nevertheless, I’d walked into the kitchen a little more gingerly that next morning, resigned to carrying out my part of the mouse-disposal bargain. I sort of gave the first trap a sideways glance in an effort to ease into looking. Then I did a double-take. No mouse. I went to the next trap. Again, no mouse.
Hmmm.
I turned on the ceiling lights and went about fixing breakfast.
“Maybe they’d seen I meant business,” I thought. “Maybe they’ve finally surrendered.”
As my eyes adjusted to the light of morning, though, something seemed somehow different about the traps. From a distance, they looked a little bare.
“No way,” I said out loud.
As I approached the traps, I could almost hear the mice, cheering with mouse glee and chanting, “Yes way!”
They’d eaten every bit of peanut butter off the traps. Licked them clean.
Are you kidding me?