Monday, August 13, 2012

It’s a dead mouse, after all

“Dude, what’s that sound?” my sister Amy asked from her air mattress in our basement. I shrugged, pretending not to hear the skritch-a-skritch coming from behind the drywall.  Then Amy turned her truth-extracting eyeball beams on me. She’s had them her whole life, but being a lawyer made them worse.

“Okay, okay, we have mice in the wall. But they just hang out in there. They probably won’t come out,” I said.

She took the news better than I’d expected. After one lap around the room, checking for possible entry points, she climbed back into bed, probably deciding that if a mouse came out to visit, she’d just subpoena it to death.

A few days later, we had to start storing our dog food in plastic bins. Some critters had been pillaging our pantry, burrowing holes into the bottom of our fifty-pound kibble bags. Then my wife Kara moved some old boxes in our laundry room to find that the corner of the room had become something of a rodent rest stop.

“This is so nasty. They carry diseases. We need to get rid of them,” Kara said, with “we” being me, and “get rid of” being used in the mobster sense of the phrase.

“What if I just housebreak them one-at-a-time instead?” I suggested.

In the end, I found myself at the hardware store, reluctantly choosing between various instruments of death, like a gladiator preparing to enter the coliseum, except less happy to be there. Poison? Too medieval, plus the unpleasant thought of mice keeling over in random places throughout the house. Glue traps, which just stick a mouse to a sheet that you throw in the trash while they’re still alive? Honestly, if you put down a glue trap, it’s not that you’re a terrible person, it’s just that a non-terrible person wouldn’t do that.

Staring at all the chemicals and devices that were designed to transport cute little critters off this mortal coil, it was hard not to picture the mice in red shorts, holding hands in our basement and singing “It’s a Small World.”

 The least awful solution seemed to be the old-fashioned mousetrap. I thought somebody was building a better one. What ever happened to that? Still, if a mouse had come shopping with me and witnessed the disturbing array of other options, I feel like he would have said, “Fine, yeah, just get some of the regular ones. You people are sick.”

That evening, donning my coonskin cap, I set about preparing the varmint traps. With peanut butter smeared on the triggers, I set the traps and placed them around the house, careful to put them where I wouldn’t catch a dog or a child. We have enough of those already.

In the morning, I approached the first trap with trepidation. What grisly, splattery scene would I encounter, causing me to get nauseous and leave the room whenever the movie “Ratatouille” came on?

As it turned out, mousetraps don’t actually catch mice, but they do make excellent mouse feeders. All of the traps had been licked clean during the night. One of them had a Post-it note stuck to the trigger, with a tiny scrawling that read: “Do you have anything in a super chunk?”

I could picture the mice fluffing the insulation inside our walls, flopping down with their bellies full, saying, “Do you think that was store brand? I think it was store brand. Would it kill him to give us some Skippy?”

My dad suggested a modification where you tie the head of a Q-tip to the trap with some dental floss, then coat everything in peanut butter, which makes the mouse work a little harder for what is about to be its final snack.

The next night, I tried his technique. At least none of them were wearing red shorts.

You can give Mike Todd some cheese at mikectodd@gmail.com.

9 comments:

  1. Aren't you supposed to kill them on the glue trap, not throw them out alive? But I agree, they are terrible - ought to be outlawed.

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    1. Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Are you seriously trying to tell me that somebody reads this blog besides my mom? Awesome! I was about to just start cutting out the middleman and just sending her the Word docs.

      About the glue traps, the instructions are pretty vague -- they say things like "Once the pest has been caught, dispose of the glue tray." No mention of what to do about the critter. I'm trying to think of how that could play out in a non-horrific way. Maybe hang the whole thing on a wall and stick some cheese next to his face? Could be like a low-rent Bugaboo Creek type situation.

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  2. Find Mouse Traps at Pest Mall. Learn how to effectively catch mice using pro grade mice traps. Rely on us for all your Mouse Traps needs.traps mouse

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    1. I'm torn -- I always delete spam comments, but this is a very topical spam comment. Hey Mom - there's a mouse trap link if you wanna click it.

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  3. Kara (oh Mike frame this for Kara, please), you are so lucky that Mike does this for you. It was inferred to me, that "I" needed to do something with the dead rodent in the basement, since I was the one that found it. So, I did. I got the snowshovel out of the garage, and a plastic bag and handed it to my husband, and proceeded to go back upstairs.

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    1. Kara got a laugh out of this one, and so did I. Being a homeowner is some dirty, dirty business sometimes.

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  4. Trapper Glue Boards are non-poisonous glue traps that capture rats and mice. Trapper glue boards come in a package of two face-to- face that separates easily for placement. Trapper glue boards are ideal to use in food plants, kitchens, restaurants, food processing plants, hospitals, residences, zoos and other sensitive areas where the use of poison is prohibited or discouraged. For better results it is recommended to be used with the Trapper Plastic tunnels.
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  5. Made from FSC certified wood the Victor Mouse Traps are very sturdy and long lasting. The snap wire part of the Victor Mouse Trap is so strong that it could even break your finger. Mice are naturally curious so if you place a piece of bait on top of the plastic triggering which is more sensitive than metals ones it will trap your rodent right away.
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  6. I use sticky glue boards and mouse trap boxes in my house for controlling mouse infestation. Although it require handling mouse body, it is safe than poison bait. Thanks for sharing this useful article.

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