Monday, November 20, 2006

Mouse Hunters...

Over the last 2 weeks, Mark and I have woken up each morning to find half eaten potatoes or nibbles out of a loaf of bread that might have been on the counter from the night before. We came to the conclusion that we had a mouse problem. We tried scrubbing down every inch of the kitchen and only leaving out the bowl of potatoes, but the mouse kept coming and eating from the potato bowl. In addition to the eaten potatoes, the mouse correctly assessed which cupboard contained our food storage and then attempted to scratch its way into the cupboard.

Mark and I discussed the situation, and I opted for just hiding the bowl of potatoes every night instead of putting out traps...ugh I couldn't stand the sight of a half dead mouse in the morning. But Mark insisted that we get traps so we settled on sticky traps. Mark surrounded the bowl of potatoes in sticky traps, but after 3 nights he had no luck. Mark started acting fanatical and he cut up a variety of different types of food in hopes of luring in the mouse. Well, last night at 3am we were woken up by a loud plastic banging sound. It would sound out every 2 minutes or so and then die down. I quickly figured out that Mark got his mouse and it was trying to get away.

Mark lept out of bed and found a partially stuck mouse to one of his traps. The only part of the mouse that was stuck was its tail and one of its paws. While Mark was trying to figure out how to get the mouse in the trash bag without touching it, the mouse made its way out of the kitchen, down the stairs, into the and to the opposite side of the living room. There, a few seconds before Mark could pounce its prey, the mouse miraculously freed itself from the sticky trap and ran behind our T.V. hutch. Mark moved the hutch to find a large hole in the wall that leads into our next door neighbors apartment. Thus....all hunt and no glory.

P.S. This story might sound gross to some, but this is a normal everyday occurence of living in Paradise.

5 SPLURTS:

A. said...

OH MY GOSH! That is EXACTLY what we are going through. We would see rats in our garage if we went in there at night and they would scamper away from our dogs food to their hiding place. We used the sticky traps and caught one. Then we've been seeing mice in the house and don't know where to put sticky traps to be safe for our kids and dog. However, 1 mouse got stuck in our sliding glass door..GONER! and another one wasn't able to get back out of the dog food so Tim took it out to a field and let it go. But we still have them!
For the traps...put them along the wall. Mice run along edges and not too often in open spaces. Good luck! We've not had a whole lot of luck with the trap besides the 1, but they are smart and made new holes to go around the traps.

Rach said...

We have a rat zapper, you guys should come and borrow it. everytime we have had rats, it gets it in 1-2 days. no stickiness, no mess, no snaps, its great!
rach

A. said...

What is a rat zapper? I'm VERY interested!! :)

Jerin said...

Have you tried putting a piece of peanut butter or cheese in the middle of the sticky trap? Of course, that one mouse you were chasing probably wouldn't make that mistake again. And Oh, plug that hole up.

BTW, great blog guys!

Anonymous said...

How annoying!!! We just went through that this summer. Jesse finally foamed up all the holes in the condo. Good Luck!!!!