firstfrost: (Default)
firstfrost ([personal profile] firstfrost) wrote2013-09-04 03:39 pm

From hell's heart I stab at thee! Or maybe it's the other way around.

Our house has some mice. I saw one last week, which usually means there are many, so I've been putting out traps. Mousetraps are tricky - I snap them on my fingers half the time putting them down, but if I don't, then they aren't hair-trigger enough to go off, and the mice eat the peanut butter without setting off the trap. [livejournal.com profile] harrock does not get to set traps, after having taken pliers to his first trap to make it easier to set, resulting in it being nearly impervious to impact.

I've caught six mice, with probably a 50% success rate, and I tend to think of the traps that get their peanut butter nibbled off as the ones that the 'smart mouse' got to, and the mice that get caught as the 'dumb mouse'. It's a more dramatic story in my head, with the smart mouse, master mouse-thief, doing Indiana Jones tricks with the peanut butter and a bag of sand. Not that I've caught a bag of sand yet.

This morning, my mouse nemesis had STOLEN THE TRAP. The trap was *GONE*. Nowhere in the kitchen that we could reach.

They're coming out of the walls! They stole the trap! What do you mean they stole the trap, man, they're animals!

Except I'm probably the monster, and he's the awesome mouse thief hero, now probably missing a hand or a tail or something, vowing vengeance. He's probably saving the trap for later, and I'll find it on my pillow when it snaps on my ear.
kelkyag: notched triangle signature mark in light blue on yellow (Default)

[personal profile] kelkyag 2013-09-05 05:12 am (UTC)(link)
Setting mousetraps is a bear. At least I am only trying to catch PCs and not mice. :} I have resorted to sanding the pins a wee bit to make them slightly easier to set ...

My limited experience so far with live-catch traps has been good -- the mouse has to actually go inside the trap to get the bait, though I suppose a sufficiently sneaky mouse might manage not to cause the door to drop while doing so. Then you have a live mouse to deal with, though.

I'd bet the mice are too timid to try to use the trap on you. :)

[identity profile] tallou.livejournal.com 2013-09-06 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
We had a brilliant perfect awesome live trap for a while. Then our neighbor borrowed it and used it as a dead trap and threw it away. Never found another that worked as well.