Mouse Trap



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SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK


My war with mice has gone on for decades. Like the zombie apocalypse, I keep killing ‘em off, and they keep coming back.

Except zombies don’t like peanut butter. I guess it would be better if they did.

If I had to choose between spiders and mice I’d take the mice, although I’d rather not have either. Spiders don’t chew through wiring or eat your food, and as far as I know they don’t do their business in your cupboards. Nobody ever pinned the bubonic plague on a brown recluse. Instead it was that other brown recluse, the rat.

Now, I’m not an animal hater. In fact, thanks to the brush pile I’ve been intending to remove for years, my property is home for rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, and so many varieties of birds that I made the Audubon Society’s honor roll.

At this point the federal government probably wouldn’t even allow me to remove that brush pile. It’s a wildland zone, according to EPA Rule #1A24-782.237-BB1442.

But when they’re outside my house, they’re wildlife. When they’re inside my house, they’re pests. The only animal allowed to roam free inside is our dog, who doesn’t chew on wires and doesn’t do his business in the kitchen cupboards. I’d know if he did. Otherwise we have the fish and Lucius the snake, all in tanks.

Mice are welcome to visit those tanks, but it wouldn’t end well.

After we got the snake I tried some live traps, and if you’re squeamish you might not want to think about why. In my case live traps were very humane indeed, because they never caught any mice.

So I went back to my standby, the good old fashioned spring loaded mousetrap. I own seven thousand of them. Did I mention my house has a mouse problem? They come down with a force strong enough to put a good sized dent in a finger and cause a guy to yell, and I should know.

In a year mice go through seven hundred and forty generations, and they pass down how to get a free meal. So use peanut butter, because it’s sticky; they’ll have to work at it, and that force will mean it’s last meal time.

It works—about half the time.

Mouse hunting season is in the fall, when the little guys go looking for a warm place to spend the winter. If I had the money, I’d head south and leave the place to them.

Over the years I’ve learned their travel patterns: The superhighway is behind the stove, with main streets going to the refrigerator and an elevated freeway to the kitchen counter.

There’s also, oddly, a bit of a side road between the basement and the kitchen. I’ve caught a fair number in the basement, which is odd because it’s cold, and has less nutrition than a bachelor’s diet. Apparently that’s low income mouse housing.

Now, there’s a little ledge in the basement stairway. It’s about eight feet above the concrete basement floor, and I’ve caught more than one mouse in that area. Maybe it’s a little mouse dance hall.

The other day I threw some clothes down the basement stairs—don’t judge me. When I did laundry (it was the same day, I swear), I noticed a mousetrap on the floor. Clearly it had fallen from the ledge; not only had it been tripped, but the peanut butter was gone. Either my thrown clothes caught it and the mice got to it later, or a particularly sneaky little guy got the meal, and dropped the trap like a hot mike at a poetry slam.

Or so I thought.

Later I picked up the last of the laundry and there he was under a t-shirt, dead as a … dead mouse. Not a mark on him. I did some quick physics calculations, and came up with a new scenario:

My friend the mouse managed to get himself a meal all right, but in doing so he tripped the trap. Surprised by the sudden noise, he jumped back.

Only there was no back.

The poor guy managed to get into the house, survive the trap, and you could even say he survived what, to him, would be about a ten story fall.

It was the concrete floor that killed him.

Well … at least he didn’t have to fight off peanut butter eating zombies.

I found some cats to help, but they seemed uninterested in leaving their kitty pool.

11 comments:

  1. The only time I've ever handled a mouse trap, the damned thing sprang on me and clipped my finger. Ouch!

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  2. I can’t stand the though of mouse traps, and yet I can’t abide mice in the house. I am happy for them to live in the garden or the shed and will even accommodate them in the garage so why do they always want to invade my space. Each time it happens I spend weeks catching the pesky things and returning them to the great outdoors, but their numbers (in the house) continue to increase to the point where I have to ring an exterminator, then I spend weeks hating myself and the whole sorry cycle starts all over again. I think the only answer is for me to live in the garden and let the mice have the house.

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    Replies
    1. Killing them doesn't bother me at all ... as long as they go fast. Now, if I could catch them alive and feed them to Emily's snake, or take them far, far away to be the circle of life for hawks or owls, I'd be okay with that--but my attempts at live trapping are just dismal failures.

      Maybe we'd all be healthier living in the gardens, anyway!

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  3. We pulled out the fridge and discovered mouse droppings so it's time to get the live traps out....

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    Replies
    1. I leave them out year round, but fall is the season here. Who can blame them for wanting to come inside then?

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  4. I detest mice and rats. I earned my first non-allowance money by killing a mouse in a gas station for the owner.

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  5. Too funny! We've had our share of mice problems. They learn quickly how to get the food out of those mouse traps. We went on a 3 week vacation one year. When we got home, a mouse had made a lovely home in our stove. Uck.

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  6. I can’t imagine focusing long enough to research; much less write this kind of article. You’ve outdone yourself with this material. This is great content. Bucket mouse trap

    ReplyDelete