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

[firstfrost]

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. 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.

Comments

Snaps on your ear

[merastra.livejournal.com]

Oh noes, ear snapping! It's dangerous to be a mouse nemesis! I hope you don't get any ear snapping. Sorry about the mouse invasion. Clearly though, all villains should have you write their stories. :-)

We had to deal with that at the inlaws house too, 2 Christmases ago. We also blocked off the mice's egress to the outdoor goody-bonanza of birdseed. It seems to have worked. Given yours are probably not lured by birdseed, you'll have a harder time separating them from their food.

I think we used cheese. We tried different cheeses and they liked them all. (Fancy imported gouda vs something plainer like jack cheese).

Re: Snaps on your ear

[izmirian.livejournal.com]

Yeah for a while we were putting out maybe 3 traps and catching a couple mice every day. But after just a few days we cleared them all out and they never came back. That was a couple years ago.

Re: Snaps on your ear

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we had mice once before, five or six years ago, but after trapping two they seemed to be gone. (Oddly, this time, there are more mice, but much less mouse spoor. They haven't gotten up into the shelves to leave droppings like last time - I barely noticed them. I guess the Sneaky Hero Thief Mouse has been giving them instructions on how to stay un-noticed.)

Re: Snaps on your ear

[izmirian.livejournal.com]

Yeah you know it does seem like you're probably up against the PCs this time which is strange as I thought that you guys were the PCs :-)