Rodentia: Judgment Day

I had two more posts about this damned mouse.  So much for that.  Had to delete ’em.

I had a dream about mice last night.  I dreamed the house was overrun with them. One of them was so big it resembled a large angry black cat that hissed at me.  Armed with a broomstick I did battle with it, only to be distracted when the house (which, in the dream, was a ship), hit bad weather and started to roll.

The Pie and I were quite pleased with ourselves for blocking the gap under the door to the water heater with dryer sheets.  Now the mouse’s only egress into the house was through the fireplace.  We have a piece of wood that leans against the fireplace opening to hide the ugly insulation and block drafts, but if you place it flush with the opening it topples open, so we have to have it at an angle where there’s a small opening at the bottom.  This is the mouse’s entrance.

I came home from work today (which for me is the 12th), all gung-ho to finally prepare a wedge that would keep the door fully shut.  I found the appropriate piece of wood in the shed and sawed it down to size.  Cut myself on my new saw.  Now it has a taste for blood.

I came back inside and was ready to wedge it into place when I figured I’d better check the trap in the fireplace, just in case the little bugger had managed to eat the rest of the peanut butter off the other side of the trap (I had discovered to my dismay a few days previous the mouse’s ability to remove the bait from the trap without setting it off).

And I got the bejesus startled out of me.

The mouse (I’m guessing it’s a female but I could be wrong) got too confident and went too far over on the trap.  It looks like it was instantaneous at least.

I have mixed feelings about this.  I’m not in the habit of killing small things (except house centipedes, because those things terrify me), or even big things for that matter.  The mouse was just following her biological imperative, and I had no right to interrupt that.  On the other hand, she was pooping in my pans, and who knows where she had been?

Andy and I ceremoniously dumped her in the scrap heap in the backyard, and then threw out the trap.

We’re going to stay vigilant in case she wasn’t the only one but the problem is solved for now.

Rodentia Update

If this were a real mouse it would be in trouble for being on my counter.

Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.

Because a war this has become.

The little mouse is taunting me, baiting me daily with its bold exploits across my floors.

The Pie and I have come to the  conclusion that perhaps there is only one mouse, and we simply see it on multiple occasions.  It’s always the same colour, same size, and it picks the same routes through the house every time.

It gloats over my frustrated attempts to keep it out.

Remember how I jammed dryer sheets into every crack in the fireplace?  Well it’s not coming through the cracks – it’s coming through the dripping, sagging, and fetid pink fibreglass insulation that is blocking my chimney.  There is obviously a hole in said chimney, as well, because the mouse, if thwarted coming out of the fireplace, can go through the wall some how and come out in the closet with the water heater.  From there it makes a bee line for the kitchen, goes under the fridge, behind the dishwasher, and then into the pan drawer under my stove.

Every day it poops in my muffin tin.

I used the muffin tins the other day to make blueberry muffins and so the tins were out for a wash.  You know what the mouse did?

It pooped in my loaf pan.

It pooped in my loaf pan.

I pulled that out to wash it.  This morning, I pulled the drawer open to take a peek, and what did I see in my other loaf pan?

TWO POOPS.

TWO POOPS

The daily deposition of that dessicated black grain is really getting to me.  I think the two poops were made out of spite for the fact that I chased the mouse through the house last night.

I have NO IDEA what this mouse is eating.  My floors are swept daily, and there are no crumbs behind the dishwasher.  My recycling bin, next to the stove, is full of clean plastic.  My pantry is impregnable and shows no signs of breach.  But every freaking day I have mouse poop in my drawer.

This is a call for vengeance.  If the mouse cannot be repelled, then it will be beaten back.  The Pie has convinced me finally to pick up some mouse traps.  Should I be successful I will look upon the body of my beaten foe and rejoice.

More bulletins as events warrant.