The Mice Invasion

 (January 2022 - March 2022)

Mice are sneaky little creatures that can get around almost anywhere. Growing up, we had mice for a while. We used mouse traps, but after taking the ear off of one and much crying on the part of my sister and I, my mom got live traps. I had so much fun checking the traps and dumping the mice into a tank. We caught a boatload and kept them as pets for a while. Then we finally released them in a field. 

We had mice for a time in our first house. We could hear them in the attic and Tyler took care of them with traps and such. I don't feel like they were a huge problem, but that could be me remembering wrong.

Then, here we are in our current house and we haven't had any problems for years and suddenly...mice.

Was it extra cold? Did they find a hole? Did we entice them in with our cereal cupboard full of spilled frootloops? Who knows. But the signs started to show up. Mouse poop in the drawers and you could hear them now and then munching on something.

The first one was spotted a couple places before we caught him. We had a chase around the couch and another in the bathroom, but he escaped. But the lazy susan cupboard ended up being his doom. I heard him in there and after cleaning out what I could, he seemed to be gone. But he (she? I don't like to think of them as girls for some reason) was staying extra flat under the susan. Tyler actually caught him with his gloved hands and he met an untimely end. Sorry dude.

There is always that initial hope that maybe there was only one, but that was quickly dispelled. We put out mouse traps, but they weren't biting. I thought back to my glory days as a child and I ordered some live traps. They look a little different, but the idea is the same. And what do you know? We caught one.

Tyler and Pearl took him down to the lake and released him. Even with the door open, it took him a minute to decide to leave, but once out, he streaked away.

 

We kept the traps in the drawers that got the most action and we caught mouse after mouse. Sometimes we'd dump them together so we could set the trap again faster. The girls liked taking pictures and videos. Tyler too. They are pretty cute. I think mice are adorable, while still knowing they carry diseases and are dirty, nasty creatures. I don't mind a mouse, as long as it isn't in my house.

It's a sad commentary that it got to be so normal to catch mice that we stopped taking pictures. We caught 12 in total, I think. The penultimate was caught minutes after Tyler and I left on a getaway in March. (No, not blogged yet.) The girls called us as we drove out of the neighborhood to say they got another. 

We saw one more much later. He came to nibble on Robyn's chocolate self portrait. (No, not blogged yet.) What a stinker. Doesn't he know you aren't supposed to eat the art? We caught him easily enough since we are pros now. 

And that was the last mouse we have seen. Granted, we are in winter again and it is very cold, but I haven't seen any signs of them. I'm hoping they are a thing of the past. But we kept our traps...just in case.