At first I didn't mind the mice. They're cute, and don't really do anything to you except scare you as they tear across the room. But then we started finding holes chewed in our clothes and fabric, droppings and shredded paper, they tore a hole in my jean quilt!, and they were keeping me up all night with their scurrying. It was time to fight back.
Adam went and sealed up all the holes he could find along the baseboards. That made a huge difference. We also set up traps where they were most often seen. Wow...we sure caught a lot! But then they started getting smart. I saw one mouse completely jump over a trap and scurry into its hole. I woke up to use the bathroom one night and found a drowned mouse floating in the toilet. Yikes! Adam went and found more holes the next morning and sealed them up. We changed trap locations and that held them at bay...
...until last night, that is. Adam spotted a mouse dash from the piano across to the couch. With some strategic placement, we caught that one plus two others in a trap. Not bad for one night. I was just about to go to bed after Adam left for work, when I heard a snap. Oh good! We caught another one! But then I heard scampering and a trap dragging on the floor followed by squeaking. Oh no. I went to investigate and found this:
a little mouse with its tail caught in the trap. Great. I looked at the little animal. I shouldn't have. It had a cute little twitchy nose with long whiskers, and its brown fur looked soft and shiny. I couldn't kill it. I would feel like a murderer. But I couldn't let it go because it would go right back to causing mayhem in the house. So I picked up the trap by the trigger wire and put the entire thing in a shoebox. The mouse soon felt its tail fall asleep and madly started trying to jump out of the box, knaw off the trap, and even started biting its tail. Horrified, I put the box outside on the porch so Adam could take care of it in the morning. Poor little mouse.
The next morning came, and when Adam carefully opened the box, we found the mouse dead. Adam suspected a heart attack from all the stress. Well, at least we didn't have to kill it.
It's been quite a battle between the Christensen’s and the field mice. Amanda is a good sport about it and has become quite the little trapper. We have to keep adapting our battle plans because the mice keep out smarting us. I've caught them setting off the traps other objects and Amanda caught them pushing the trap out of their normal path ways. Bating them is simply out of the question. They are much too smart to be baited by cheese, crackers, chocolate, or peanut butter. So instead of baiting them we have to think like them and place the traps in the paths they travel most or stick it around a corner where they don't expect it. We can always tell the "new comers" because they are still enticed by the bits of chocolate we put in the trap but 99% of our mice are caught without bait. Amanda Discovered a mouse was living in her car and we trapped that one with bait.
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