Mouse!!!
Now I know I joke about not changing my sheets or cleaning my shower as often as I should, but don't get the impression that I have a filthy house. On the contrary I'm what you would call..."A neat freak in recovery". I used to not even be able to go to bed without having everything in place. Our shoes had to be put away, the magazines had to be just in the right spot and even the pillows on the couch had to look just right. Now that I have two kids under two I've realized that my life isn't dictated by how neat and clean my house is.
When Jack was a newborn we had a mouse in our garage because we had left an open bag of bird seed around. One night when I was sitting in my chair nursing Jack I saw a mouse come out of the bathroom. I screamed bloody murder and Michael came running. He quickly got rid of the mouse with the help of Precious our cat. After that I was totally on edge...I kept thinking I was seeing mouse poop everywhere and I was sure we had another mouse. I kept cleaning up poop expecting new poop to show up, but it didn't.
Two days ago Michael and Owen were in our closet and Owen moved the bouncy chair that's in there and a mouse came running out. Michael had me get Owen out of the bathroom and he cornered the mouse over by the toilet and the baseboard heater. Michael was sure he was over there, but he disappeared. So he got a screwdriver and took the baseboard heater off the wall and sure enough there was a little hole in the wall. When all this cold weather started I was feeling a major draft coming from under the heater so Michael went and bought some of that expanding foam insulating stuff and sprayed it under there, but it didn't fill the entire hole. Let me tell you we don't make it a habit to leave food out and we take our garbage out quite frequently so I think the mouse just came in because it's so darn cold outside with all this snow. Plus I haven't seen any mice poop so I don't think they have been here long. After the first mouse incident I went and bought some mouse traps so Michael set one up next to the heater and baited it with peanut butter. A little after midnight Michael woke up to the noise of the mouse trap, but the trap didn't do the job all the way so Michael had to go in and finish it. Ewwwww!!!!
Last night we decided to set another one just in case there were more. We plan on filling the whole with more expanding foam insulating stuff, but we want to make sure we get rid of all of the mice first. So Michael baited the trap and went to play on the computer and I was in bed reading a book. I got up to go use the bathroom and I looked at the trap and yelled to Michael that he forgot to bait the trap. Michael came and looked and was sure he had put peanut butter on it. So he baited it again and we went back to what we were doing. Literally within 10 minutes I heard a creak come from the bathroom and Michael ran in there and the bait was gone...again! The dumb trap was a dud and now we had a really full mouse. He went downstairs and got another trap and baited it. We didn't hear anything until almost 3am and we woke up to a snap and sure enough we caught another mouse. Thankfully the trap did it's job this time and Michael didn't have to do anything except dispose of it. Ewwwww!!!
We have one more working trap and we'll be setting it up again tonight. I can't believe we've had 3 mice in this house this year. The whole thing just grosses me out. I sure hope there aren't anymore, but the nice thing is they aren't very hard to catch.
3 comments:
I know what you mean about the cold sis! Kim, the boys and I have been hearing the tell tale sounds of a rat scratching around the ceiling of our townhouse. We spoke to the apartment manager and she said she would have an exterminator out, so we'll see if that helps!
Mice are terrible. I also left a bag of bird seed in our detached garage last spring and we had hundreds of mice. It was horrible!!! We even had the same problems with the traps. We did find however that there's this type of bait that you can put down where the mice eat it and bring it to the "nest" and share it with everyone and then everyone dies. It's awesome. Good luck with nasty mice!
(I found your blog through MckMama!)
You know, I just saw my very first live mouse today. I had Buddy outside to go potty and I peeked around the side of the house where the water hose faucet is, and there is a space between the snow and the house. I don't know why, but its like the house overextends the foundation a little, so that part of the ground had no snow on it. Along came a little fast mouse running down that dry patch. Freaked me out, I turned around and ran back inside as fast as I could. At least it was OUTSIDE... but now I am wondering about a hole because our first floor is always so cold. Hmmmm.
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