Mousecapades

When Marty began spending a lot of time in the kitchen, I just yelled at him and kept shooting him out. Over and over. Assuming that he was just scrounging for floor noms I might have dropped in dinner preparation. Until I saw him trying to jump on the counter, something he never does. That’s when I noticed the mouse poop.

After freaking and bleaching and running everything through the dishwasher and bleaching again, we called the exterminator. He came out and set a few of the biggest traps I’ve ever seen in my life. These are not meant for mice. They’re barely meant for rats. I’m pretty sure I’d catch a raccoon if I set one outside. The idea of hurting a mouse with one of these, which I felt was akin to attacking a kitten with a semi-truck, nearly moved me to tears.

I was able to ignore my feeling until one night when Husband called me to the kitchen. There he was, in the middle of the kitchen. Fluffy and tiny and field-mousey. Pretty much exactly like one of our hamsters. Husband attempted to catch him in a shoebox, which went exactly as well as you think it did. (He only broke one plate.) It was decided. I could no longer harm the fluffy baby.

I spent time debating with myself just setting off the traps and making the exterminator come up with something else. With visions of ER visits for broken fingers dancing through my mind, I convinced Husband we needed to go to the store and find something a little more friendly. The trap we found seemed ingenious. Mousey goes through a tunnel towards delicious bait, tunnel snaps shut behind him. I take Mousey to delightful green meadow where he can live out his days in sunshine and rainbows. My kitchen no longer needs to be sanitized on an hourly basis. It seemed pretty foolproof.

The morning after setting out the humane, crunchy granola, save-your-stupid-life trap, I awoke to an empty trap. And one single piece of mouse poop. Right on top of the trap. I tried adding more peanut butter and moving it around, but really? After that insult I was no longer as concerned about saving Mickey. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s too smart to be taken alive.

So the exterminator came out and reset the too-big rat mouse traps. And somehow that fucker took the peanut butter off of the trap. Without setting it off. It’s possible the mouse in my kitchen has qualified for MENSA. I can’t even get peanut butter off a spoon without hurting myself. And somehow he’d removed every bit of it from the deadly grips of the trap. The exterminator came back out yesterday, and set out some glue traps. These seem even worse in theory to me – they just… hold them there? and they wait for me to… throw them out? That seems worse than mouse-trap instant death. And that’s if the little Einstein even bothers to fall for it.

I don’t want to live with a mouse in my house indefinitely (especially since he’s not paying rent or buying groceries), but I’ve yet to be able to reason with him and convince him that walking into the human trap is in his best interest. Is there some super awesome solution I’m missing?

Is the answer really Husband waiting in the kitchen with a shoebox all night?