Since the weather became colder, we have had some unwelcome guests in our house...mice. We first discovered them because we have a drop ceiling in our kitchen (thanks to the previous owners) and I heard them skritching along above the ceiling tiles one evening squeaking all the way. Blecchhhhh. So when I get a chance i pick up some mouse hunting supplies at the local hardware store. I put peanut butter on some traps and place it by the spots that I suspect the mice are getting into our kitchen. The first night I caught 1 mouse. That was good. It was a dumb mouse and fell for the peanut butter trick right away. However, we had (at least) one other mouse that has eluded capture. I tried glue boards, I tried the peanut butter trick...the kids even suggested that I put bread on the traps since they seem to like that as well. I even tried to put a trap in the ceiling tiles, but there is not enough space between the ceiling tile and the ceiling to let the trap spring.
The mouses luck ran out....TONIGHT!!!! HAAAHAHAHHAAA!
I was sitting in the quiet evening house when I thought I heard pans rattling under the stove.
Oh No, I thought...its living under the stove in our pots!!! BLEEEEEECH!
So I run over to the stove, and pull out the thing under the stove. Nothing.
I move some pots around, and I see the mouse running frantically away. In its panic it couldn't jump high enough to get out of the box. Perhaps it use the pots to get up before, because at this point I had most of the pots out of the thingy. So, hoping it would not jump out, I ran and grabbed one of my set traps with PB on it, and placed it in the stove compartment where the mouse was. When mice aren't stressed, they can avoid the traps, but when they panic, they tend to ignore caution. So I got the broom, and started stabbing at the mouse to make it run around. Sure enough, after 30 seconds, it stepped on the trap. As it took its last breath, I tossed it in the trash can...
Trash day is tomorrow.
P.S. Now I'm washing every pan under our stove.
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5 comments:
You need your own PBS documentary: The Mouse Hunter. Sometime you must share some of your mouse hunting stories from when we lived in the farm house.
I was going to ask if you wanted to come hunt mice at my house but then I happened to stop by your place yesterday. You really should put the ceiling back up. LOL!
i would totally watch that. and at the end you could play a song!
I didn't forget to put the ceiling back...I wanted to see if any mice would jump to their deaths on my kitchen floor. The followup to this story is that a few minutes after I killed the mouse, I heard scritching along the ceiling tiles, and, filled with adrenaline from my mouse hunting experience, I went on a mad ceiling tile ripping down expedition. I now understand the movie Mousehunt.
I met someone at the retreat this weekend who was telling us her mouse hunting stories. She lives in the country and was getting lots of mice. She ended up getting rid of them by using essential oil of peppermint on cotton balls which were then placed into the openings where the mice were getting in. She also placed them on their "trails." Besides making her house smell great, she said she never saw another mouse. Turns out rodents HATE the smell of peppermint.
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