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We have a mouse problem. A problem exacerbated by the fact that while all three of the felines who turn up for several square meals a day are keen hunters they only do outside, not under the sink. So last night when a mouse popped out from under the dishwasher intending to see if anything had fallen out of the vegetable rack Kevin had a large ‘Not On Duty’ sign in between his ears and barely allowed my shouts of ‘Get Out of Here’ to disturb his entirely undeserved beauty sleep.
The local mice seem to look on our house as the Welcome Saloon. They have the measure of the cats, they must know that we don’t use poison and there’s at least one super-mousebrain amongst them because I swear they’ve worked out how to get the chocolate off a mouse trap without springing it. What other explanation is there for all the empty but charged traps?
The final straw came this morning. I heard shouts from the OH and found him in the downstairs shower room pointing at the loo. Inside was a mouse doing lengths. Naturally it fell to me to deal with it.
I contemplated fetching Kevin and giving him a lesson in fishing or something.
Instead I fetched a soup ladle (anguished exclamations from the OH, ‘We eat from that!’ Me, ‘That’s why we have a sink, disinfectant, washing up liquid…’). I loathe mice but even the hardest heart would have softened at this small wet thing gamely doing mouse stroke. It wasn’t particularly willing to be rescued but I scooped it up in the end and put in out in the garden, knowing full well that it’ll probably be back under the sink by this evening.
I reckon I’m pretty tolerant but I absolutely draw the line at sharing my lavatory with rodents so I’m going to redouble my efforts to find one of those live mouse traps which seem to have vanished from the shops. They work pretty well providing you take the mice for a nice long drive in the car before releasing them.
Of course they’re housemice so it would be unkind to leave them in the middle of nowhere but it’s hardly friendly to let them out to colonise someone else’s house. On the other hand is there anyone I really don’t like…?
Victoria Corby 
My mum had a mouse in her house over the summer. We bought a mouse trap and put some peanut butter on it – not easy to remove. Next morning the trap had gone! I looked around a bit and saw mouse+trap under a chair. When I nudged it with my foot the mouse struggled!! Yikes!
The only kind thing to do was do put pressure on the trap to kill the mouse which was rather a ghastly thing to do. Once it stopped moving, I took it to the end of the garden and released the body. It’s one of those plastic traps that you can release with a click.
I feel queasy still just thinking about it. But, good riddance to the little pest.
Oh crumbs! I’ve never had a mouse trap that didn’t kill instantly. it would make me queasy too!
Good for you, Victoria. I couldn’t leave a mouse to drown, either. You did remember to wash the ladle, didn’t you? 🙂
Nah, I though I’d serve his dinner from it this evening and see if he noticed.
😀 Do let us know.
I use live traps…I bought a whole supply from a chap selling them on the street in Nicaragua and had a lot of funny looks from the Costa Rican customs man when returning.
I need them because Higher Authority prefers to keep his poultry food in the house to avoid it being eaten by mice outside…..
As to where I take them…..never let it be said that I forget a shop (non food) which gave me bad service and which has a yard conveniently close to parking.
Ha. Our cats are now getting too fat and old to do anything as energetic as chase a mouse 🙂 I feel for you. We’ve had slugs in the bedroom lately – a situation I was NOT too happy with. I filled in a few holes and it seems to have stopped….Maybe you need to find the holes? Good luck! Eek!