Saturday, February 28, 2009

Mousecapades, The Sequel

First I have to make a confession: we may have been wasteful from a practical standpoint. We did not reuse the trap after it was successful. Hubby drew the short straw and had to dispose of the first success so he simply threw the entire trap away with the dead mouse. The traps are cheap enough and he figured the smell of death might be on that one. It sounded good anyway, and it sounded more hygienic to me. I certainly didn't want to mess with prying the trap open, removing the body, etc. Let that quarter go! It was worth it.

Having caught the first mouse, we set another trap and went to bed. Upon getting up the next morning I went into the kitchen and peeked into the cabinet. Yes, we had another victim. I opened the cabinet door wider slowly--as if it was going to come back to life--and waited for it to scamper off. It didn't. It was awfully small and, darn it, kind of cute. Of course, it was also dead so that helped the "aw" factor, as opposed to something looking around with beady eyes and running around, leaving behind feces. That was two down, x to go. We set another trap.

That evening the scrabbling in the wall began again. The cats assumed their positions, staring at the walls with their tails twitching. A little while later, snap! Three down, whoohoo! We threw it away and put out another trap.

It has been a few months now and that fourth trap is still under the sink, waiting. There has not been any more scrabbling in the wall. The cats no longer sit and stare at the wall, waiting for a chance to catch whatever is in there. Life was good again.

And then it dawned on me why we had suddenly had mice: it had gotten colder so the snakes had gone into hibernation, leaving these mice free to wander under our house in search of warm shelter. OMG. Did somebody say, "Snake"? !!!!

And that is another story.

4 comments:

countrypeapie said...

Oh, lordy. We had a couple of rat snakes in the chicken coop last summer. I don't know what I'd do if one ever got into the house. Move, probably.

Sonya --Dime Store Thrift said...

YEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! NO SNAKES! NO SNAKES!

Frankly, I am terrified of them. How do they move so fast with NO LEGS?!

Unknown said...

Yikes! I would have been scared silly.
I wanted to respond to your question about the textured wallpaper. I think I didn't explain it very clearly. :)
I painted the wallpaper with the spray paint, then painted over it with a light tan color (lighter than the dark brown in the previous picture). I used a brush with very little paint on it, so it just hit the raised areas. Does that help?

kari and kijsa said...

Oh mY! Mice & snakes!!!
blessings,
kari & kijsa