Of Mice and Men

Monday's w/ Michael

Jane and I knew we had some mice living in the house with us. We could hear them in our walls. We would find their little droppings all over.

We would also find holes they chewed through various bags.

We knew they especially enjoyed hanging out in our pantry. So, last Friday, I strategically place 4 glue traps in our pantry. Before we went to bed that night, we had caught our first mouse. Saturday morning, I discovered that one of my glue traps was missing. That was it. I had had enough. I decided to clean out the entire pantry, find the missing glue trap, and get rid of our mice problem once and for all. What I discovered surprised and horrified me. (The following paragraphs contain graphic details and pictures. Those of you with a weak stomach will want to stop reading now).

I removed everything from the pantry, including all of Jane's cookbooks. Here are MOST of them on our dining room floor.

Then I decided to move the bookcase. Here is what I discovered behind it!

Once I cleaned up all of the shredded paper, I was still left with quite a mess. The stench of stale mouse urine was overpowering. (See I told you not to read this if you had a weak stomach!) After scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing, we finally got the pantry in relatively good shape. But we didn't put everything back in the pantry just yet. The only thing in the pantry were 8 mouse traps. I still had the 2 glue traps left over and I added 6 kill traps. I used 3 different versions of kill traps. Here are my 4 variations of traps.

The war was on!

Saturday night, before we went to bed, we caught mouse #2. Sunday morning, we discovered 3, 4, & 5. Pictured below are 3 & 4. How stupid can you be?

To make a long story shorter, between Friday night and Wednesday morning, we caught 12 mice! The greatest discovery was this find on Wednesday morning.

Here are #'s 10, 11, & 12. Yep, that's right: 3 mice on 1 trap! And I thought #'s 3 & 4 were stupid!

We caught another one Saturday, so that makes 13 mice in 9 days. I'm still not sure who is winning this war though. I may have killed 13 mice, but I'm left with images and smells that will haunt me for years.

Make it a great Monday!