Of Mice And (very nearly) Men
Wednesday, October 24, 2012 at 8:25PM Remember the dead mouse in my basement?
After it was removed I did a really impressive job of convincing myself that it was an anomaly. A rogue mouse going where no mouse had gone before and never would again. I determined that there were no more.
Then my dad came and we cleaned out the garage. As we sorted through drawers and cupboards we found ample evidence of mouse habitation. It turns out that mice don’t use toilets. They just kind of go anywhere and everywhere.
But we cleaned it up! Surely no more mice would want to live in a clean garage, right? And oh sure one jumped out of a bucket that my dad lifted up but that doesn’t really mean anything. Besides, that’s the garage. The garage it practically outside. Those mice probably just came in, looked around, pooped and ran right back out.
I have amazing powers of self-delusion.
It’s a gift.
Then, last Saturday, I was in the storage room and found a very, very live mouse. In the house. In the house where I live. With my children.
After I finished hyper ventilating I went and bought some mouse poison. But then I got the heebie-jeebies thinking about mice crawling off into the corners of my home and dying.
And rotting.
And stinking.
So I put the poison out for the garage mice and bought regular old mouse traps for the basement.
And it’s possible that it took me much longer than it should have to figure out how to set them, but that’s why I have Hayden. Hayden likes puzzles! He smeared peanut butter on them and set them and put them in the storage room.
I could not decide if actually catching a mouse would be a good thing or a bad thing. NOT catching one might mean that we didn’t really have mice but it also might mean that we just have super-intelligent mutant mice so perhaps catching a mouse might actually be best. Luckily I only had to ponder that question for about 12 minutes before Hayden checked and there was a dead mouse in the trap.
The question then became, what do we do with the mouse? Me touching it was completely out of the question. I did not even look at it. I have a rodent phobia.
Faith made the mistake of wondering - out loud - if they could get into our bedrooms and run over us while we are sleeping. She was fairly horrified when I burst into tears at the thought. That moment will add another couple of weeks to her therapy bill.
Once again, Hayden stepped up to the plate. He went down and got the trap, carried it out to the trash and disposed of the body. Then he reset the trap and put it back.
Man I love that kid. Really, really love him.
I realize that plenty of 15 year old boys around here can kill a deer, gut it and skin it but to me emptying the mouse trap is even braver than all of that.
In the last 24 hours we have caught four mice in traps and poisoned more (I hope). Clearly this is an issue. How is it that we’ve lived in this house for 13 years without ever seeing a mouse and they pick THIS fall for infestation. It’s like the little varmints just knew that I’m in charge now and that I am more afraid of them than they are of me.
And also that I declawed the cats.
Good thing I have my secret weapon son.
Reader Comments (20)
OK so I am not a mouse person either, but...they sell these AWESOME (and yes more $$) traps that completely HIDE the mouse they dispose of. So, on an off chance that you may end up needing to remove one those traps are a Godsend. I know.
Also - my Mom once jumped up screaming and crying on a table because a hamster ball went rolling by her. The kicker? It was an empty ball. She's that scared of small rodents. So you aren't alone.
Juuuust to make you feel better, here's our mouse story. We, too, found evidence of a lone mouse in our rarely-used Kitchenaid (not really rarely used, but we're not massive bakers) and likewise had well-developed delusions of the mouse's singularity. Cut to two months later, when I see a mouse running from the basement stairs (two feet from my bed) toward the main stairs in the next room. Cut to two weeks later, returning from our ill-timed Christmas vacation (we had to leave the day after the mouse sighting). Basically, we had an infestation and there was mouse poop on every. surface. in. the. house. Including (and I shudder as I remember this) on my pillow as I went to bed that evening. It took lots and lots of poison to make the situation mildly livable again. We had glue traps that lined the floor of the same basement door that I saw a handful of mice scurrying from and we never caught a single one (stupid city mice). Even now I can spot mouse poop across a crowded room. It took months of living in our new house to stop looking in corners for errant mice. Moral of the story: NEVER ignore mouse poop. It will only haunt you if you do.
Also, almost a year later I was pregnant and had finally, finally broken my rule to bring food outside of the kitchen. I took a sleeve of crackers downstairs to my bedroom and left it on my night table. We hadn't seen mouse poop in months, surely they were all gone, right? WRONG. Middle of the night. Rustle rustle rustle. Sound of sleeve of crackers falling to the floor. Basically, I never slept again.
Finally, mouse control tip: lock down pet food like it is your job. The Vitamin K in pet food (used to counteract commonly ingested poisons) also counteracts mouse poison. Don't leave pet food out between feedings. It's also a good idea to just put most of your food in plastic bins.
AAAACCCKKKK!! I am so sorry about this situation! Yaaaayyyy for Hayden! Dead animals are a common theme today...haha. :)
And dead animals in your walls is very gross. Something died in the closet wall of our first house here, and we never used it again in the two years that we lived there. Blech.
In KY we had a company come and do their thing. It seemed to work. At least, that's what I told myself. I have skills comparable to yours. :)
Yay, yay, YAY, for Hayden. What a manly man.
Oh my gosh! I just spent the night in Allison's living room (the night of her bday party) and they're having a horrible mouse infestation problem and we could hear it scurrying all night long. And they then found a huge one in the corner near where we were sleeping. Also, their mice won't go in those traps, so they have to use glue traps, which are monstrous and also means they they have to put the live mice in their freezer to kill them. So... could be worse!
Okay- I feel like I need to start this story out by saying that I have wonderful, loving, very clean, normal parents. Well, when I was growing up, I had a room in the basement. One Fall I started to hear lots of rustling and told my dad I thought we had a mouse. Well, being my dad (and a normal man) he said he would take care of it and put it on the very bottom of his "to-do" list.
A couple weeks past and I woke up one night... WITH SOMETHING IN MY HAIR! I reached up and grabbed the thing- realizing it was a mouse when my hands touched it. I freaked out, ran up the stairs, and slept on the couch for like a month.
My dad started putting out traps and caught like four an hour for three hours. It was crazy how fast he was catching them. After a couple of days, the traps stopped getting full and we were in the clear.
I still give him crap about it to this day... And don't share this story very often (for obvious reasons) so you better feel special. Haha.
Wow, those are some crazy stories! I heard Mice do not like the smell of mothballs, so I throw them in our crawl space every year. Good luck. Our mouse problem is mild, seriously one or two a year is all. I am proud of that boy of yours!
We lived across from a corn/bean field growing up. So naturally when the field was harvested all the field mice went to find a new home. The mice were very smart and seemed like each year they evolved, we would lay the traps outs and hear a snap only to find the food gone and no mouse. My mom got very creative in catching the mice. I think the best trick was to place a glue mat down, then close to that a trap. The mouse would get stuck in the glue and scurry around to get off, then snap they would go right into the trap.
Luckily, I've not had any mice in my house, but we have found snakes in our basement. I think I would have handled the mice better.
Ack!!!!!
I can't believe all the stories! Stephanie mentioned the traps that hide the mouse, um, remains. I called them hockey puck traps since they are big, round and black.
I used to have them set in every corner of the house and near 'trouble' spots. After you clear out the first round of the pests, I just checked them once a month or so. If I caught one, I would place another and then check every day for a week to make sure there wasn't a problem. This will probably happen everytime it gets cold outside, but if you have traps set year round, you should be okay!
And declawed cats can catch mice! And they also make great early warning systems. If you see one of your cats staring at a corner or under a cabinet for more than 3 minutes, place a trap near it because they saw or smelled something there. Make Caspian earn that spot on your bed!!!!
(Also, this is a great way to encourage the kids to keep things tidy . . right?)
A few years ago I was cleaning the pantry shelves. I wiped a shelf that was higher than me and a mouse came down and hit me on the cheek. Although I don't have a phobia of rodents like I do snakes, I take exception when they land on my face. I screamed and ran, clearing 3 dogs and a cat (who were witness to this event) and flew up the stairs to wake up my son to tell him about the incident (3 dogs and cat were on MY heels rather than catching the mouse which one would THINK was THEIR job!)
Living in the country, it comes with the territory, I guess. We don't get them a lot and husband is pretty diligent about watching for them. They are terrifying when you don't expect them.
Since we're swapping mice horror stories......
We live on out in the country, so we have to be ever vigilant about miice. Luckily, our house cat is a good, little mouser and does quite well at controlling the in-house infestation.
Only problem is what she does with the bodies. Usually if she has a mouse, she'll scratch at the door until we let her out so she can go do God only knows what the poor creature. Occasionally though, she catches the mice when no one is home. Then she has limited options for disposal.
Her preferred method is to gnaw the head off and then deposit the decapitated torso in the middle of the living room making sure we can't miss it. One year, however, she chose to deposit the remains deep within the folds of a horse blanket I had sitting in the corner of the liviing room. For a few days, I kept smelling a faint whiff of decomposition, but just figured it was a dead mouse in the wall. Then I decided to shake out the horse blanket. Who knew such a small, slimy, rotted body could produce such a HUGE and utterly gag-inducing smell. It literally invaded every cubic inch of air space in the house. Even after removing the body, and the blanket, from the house, I could still smell it for days. The cat must've been equally as grossed out, because she's never hidden a dead mouse since.
Yikes! Thank goodness for Hayden. Seriously what would you do without him? He better kill of all these mice before he goes away to college.
PS - omg these stories! I've never even seen a mouse but would LOSE my mind if I did. And now I'm not sure if I'll even be able to sleep tonight.....{shudder}
Don't do the glue traps and hide them behind something.
Then they get stuck. And you can HEAR them.
You do not want to hear mice squeaking for help. Trust me.
OMG--these stories have completely freaked me out! I have an unreasonable phobic fear of mice--when I say unreasonable, YES, I do think they are going to run straight toward me and try to climb my leg, YES, when I see them, they look a foot long to me & I ALWAYS think they are rats. I live in an old house & we get field mice occasionally. For whatever reason I am always the one that sees them, and no matter what time of day or night this completely hysterical, high pitched scream comes out of me & I climb whatever is nearby--person, furniture, etc. Of course, this unreasonable fear also causes me to be compelled to read every mouse story I see, so after reading Marla's story, I may never sleep again. I just last night (hubby caught a mouse the night before after I saw it & woke him up to set a trap & catch it so I could sleep) had a talk with hubby about the possibility of one climbing on me while sleeping & he of course assured me that this would never happen. I would kill him but guess I better not because then I would have to move out of my house--way too much trouble! Also need to keep him around for mouse capture & disposal.
When I was about 7 years old I was in bed trying to get to sleep and I could hear a chewing sound. I found my parents and told them that there was a mouse trying to chew through my wall. They told me that wasn't possible and to go to bed. The good daughter that I was, I went back to bed and fell asleep... only to wake up to the feeling of something running across my bare legs.
I jumped up out of bed and started brushing myself off thinking it was a spider. When I found nothing on my or the floor I turned to my bed, where under the top sheet was a mouse sized lump running around in a mousey fashion. I ran to my mom and dad's room, woke them up, and told them a mouse just ran across my legs. Being that it was the middle of the night and they were sleeping, they said I dreamed it and to go back to bed. When I persisted they followed me to my room, and we saw the mouse. One cat and about a half hour later, the mouse was dead - but I slept elsewhere!
I second Taylor's motion about not using sticky traps. In college a roommate of mine used them. The first one caught a bat. I really didn't want to know we had bats in our overpriced Boston apartment. The second one caught a baby mouse. Who SCREAMED for help. When we got there, it had several other baby mice around wondering what to do. Heartbreaking! Made me wish we could live in peace with the mice. I think we had to get a boyfriend to come over and end the poor thing's misery.
Last weekend I spent the night on Allison's floor and they've been having mice problems and halfway through the night we woke up and could hear it squeaking and moving about. The next day they caught a huge one behind the TV like a foot away from where my head was. Plus, their mice avoid the normal traps, so they've been forced to resort to glue traps, which means they catch live mice and then PUT THEM IN THEIR FREEZER. Now that's a nightmare scenario.
I am a glutton for punishment...I keep coming back to read the stories, and I am sitting here feeling something run around on the top of my head. Must. Stop. Reading.
I'm with Christina. These stories completely freak me out, but I have to read them. A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night to a bat flying around my bedroom!!! My husband works 24 hour shifts and of course it's a night he's not home. After 45 minutes of sheer terror and a lot of phone calls, all the while hiding under the covers, he came to my rescue. It was not pretty!!
I had a rogue mouse once, and a dear friend advised me to set the trap inside a small, brown paper sack. That way, when the job was done, you don't have to touch the trap or the mouse. You pick up the bag and dispose of it that way, without having to see anything gross!