As I am sitting on the couch wrapping a small present, and chatting on the phone with my mom I see a mouse scurry across the floor, run between my feet and hide under the couch. I screamed and told my mother I'd have to call back later that I had seen a mouse and needed my husband to come home to protect me. I punched in my husband's cellphone number and heard it ringing. After the third or fourth ring, I heard his voice.
"Come home and kill this mouse!" I said into the receiver
"You're crazy," my husband replied, "I am not leaving band practice to kill no mouse!"
"Its a huge mouse!" I said "Its the size of Manhattan."
"It is not," he retorted, "Its just a field mouse, Dad gets them every winter"
"Please?" I begged, putting on my damsel in distress voice. He didn't buy it one bit.
"I'll kill it when I get home," he said. With that, our conversation was over. I was still shaken so I grabbed my son and retreated to our attic bedroom. I flopped my son and myself onto the couch, pulled my feet up to a safe distance, and flipped on the television. My hero would not be coming to my rescue this time. I just had to be the coward I was born to be. After my son fell asleep I grabbed my laptop and began to research the best way to get rid of mice. I had seen one and I've been told if you see one mouse you've got a dozen at least. I had seen a few sites that suggested humane trapping, regular snap the neck mouse traps, poisons, and one site suggested cats.
When researching the poisons, as much as I hate mice, I didn't like the way they kill the mice. So I said no exterminators, no poisons. That left me with a few options; regular snap-traps, humane traps, and cats. In my mind a humane trap would be okay except that I was thinking more would find their way in. Field mice were an annual problem according to my husband so humanely trapping some and moving them to an area far away didn't seem like a permanent solution. Sure I could humanely remove these mice but what happens when I make room? New ones find opportunity in that.
That left me with only a couple of other options, according to my Google "research". Snap-traps that break the mouse's neck, and a cat. Someone else suggested to me that I buy some of that glue paper. The problem, again with that is that the mouse suffers needlessly, because it dies by starving to death on a piece of sticky paper. So, I narrowed my options to the snap traps. The mouse is killed quickly without much ado and no needless suffering. Also, I figured, no arguments over who cleans the litter box.
When my husband returned that evening I told him what my research had turned up. He said he'd go out and get mouse traps from the local dollar store in the morning when they reopened. The next morning came and my husband's procrastination kicked in . He didn't actually go and buy the traps until sometime mid-afternoon that day.
"Would you hop to it before the man-eating mouse comes out from hiding?" I nagged.
"Fine, fine," he said, scooping up his tennis shoes. With that he was out the door. After some time he returned and showed me the traps. He had ignored my request that all the devices be something that kill the mice quickly and had purchased a few glue traps. I shook my head but reached for the bag and began sorting through the traps,popping them open, and reading the directions. I decided to put peanut butter on the bait pedal.
I set about half a dozen traps in all of the areas of the house that I knew mice were hanging out. I put one behind our couch, one between the refrigerator and the wall, one under the stove, and about three in various cabinets where food was stored. We went about our daily routines, and as night fell a sense of relief washed over me. We'd be mouse free.
After we had caught about a dozen mice in a week's time I started getting frustrated. I was throwing away mice corpses several times a week, and yet, I kept seeing the vermin everywhere. It was so bad I was becoming accustomed to interaction with them. At first when they would run out from under a cabinet or a piece of furniture my heart would leap out of my chest, run circles around my Christmas tree, and pop back in. Soon, though, my heart was staying inside of my chest cavity and it would only pick up pace occasionally, like when my eyes spotted a pregnant mama mouse.
I still was anti poison, for whatever reason I didn't want to see the creatures die a death that would cause them long term suffering. I decided it was back to the old drawing board if I was going to keep my sanity intact. So I went to my trusty friend, Google.com and began looking up the word "mouser" which I knew was the term that roughly defined cats who can catch mice. Although it can be applied to any animal that catches mice, I knew what I was looking for.
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