Friday, April 22, 2011

A Yucky Little House Guest

(If only they were this cute in real life!)

I couldn't decide if I wanted to fess up to this, but, since nothing else of interest happened today, and I've been ignoring my blog for far too long, I will go ahead and write about it.  It appears we have a mouse problem.  Ew.  We're not dirty people (or at least I'M not dirty people, the stepsons are another matter) and my house is clean and free of garbage, yet it appears that some little mice decided to move in this winter.  Gross.  Well, actually, they're really cute, but they're vermin, and that's still gross.

After only a few minutes at home Wednesday night, having returned from the wake later than expected, something started banging around upstairs.  Since we threaten DEATH to anything that attempts to wake up the sleeping baby, we quickly tracked down the culprit: Scout the cat.  She came thundering down the stairs, with a mouse, which she promptly let loose in the dining room.  Don and I squealed.  (sorry Don, you squealed)  We quickly went into "What-the-hell-do-I-do-now" mode and rounded up bowls and flashlights to track the nasty thing down.  The cat, aided by the dog, chased it into the heat strip, and then chased it behind the bookcase.  And there it sat.  So Don moved the bookcase, slowly, and expected me to catch the little bugger in my bowl.  And I'm proud to say that I "manned" up and caught the little guy.  Unfortunately my aim was off a smidge and I ended up smashing him in the head when I put the bowl down.  Ooops.  It didn't survive.

Completely grossed out, we vowed to pick up some traps and catch any stragglers.  Only, we got sidetracked Thursday by the funeral and forgot to pick up some traps.  I did remember though, this afternoon, when another mouse poked its head out from under the closet door.  Ew, again.  This time, however, I was home with just Ben.  And Ben thought this afternoon would be the BEST time to play next to the closet door, and nowhere else.  Every time I moved him away he would throw a temper tantrum scaring the mouse I was trying to catch in my bowl back into the closet.  Since Ben wouldn't leave me alone to catch the mouse, and I didn't want the mouse to run out of the closet and hide somewhere else, I enlisted the help of Scout the cat.  I threw her in the closet with the mouse.  Problem solved.  Every time the mouse went near the door, Scout hissed and scared it back into the depths of the closet.  When Don finally made it home from work, (with mouse traps!) he cleaned out the closet, caught the mouse in the bowl (without killing it) and took it out to the woods.

Success!  Now we just need to place the traps and hope any other little intruders find their way there, and not into my kitchen!

1 comment:

  1. I know exactly what you mean about admitting that you've had a mouse in the house! I, too, have a clean house and yet, we too have had a couple of visitors. My cat doesn't seem to be much of a mouser though and the pests are pretty good at hiding from us, but we spot what they leave behind and we too buy a few traps each year. Good luck! I hope they find their way back outdoors on their own very soon !!

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