Make that mice – it seems that my knew home has come with a few. And lately they have become a bit more bold: coming out of hiding in the middle of the day for food, managing to debait traps unscathed. So I recently had to step up my efforts.
Unfortunately, this dirty job is entirely mine. My wife will have no part in it and I have to mind my kids in any efforts that I go to to handle it. The last thing I need is a trip to the emergency room because my son ate mouse poison or got his finger snapped in a trap (he is only 20 months old – there is only so much explaining you can do). While my wife definitely wants them dead and out of our house, she doesn’t want to have to touch anything mouse-related to get us there (I don’t really blame her).
So today while I was at Lowe’s with my 4 year-old daughter, I got some new traps and bait. And as a result my house is already 4 mice emptier than this morning (hopefully that equates to a mouse-free house, but it is too soon to tell). I got some of the flat, sticky traps and put them in kid-safe areas (under registers, behind the dishwasher).
Within an hour I caught the largest culprit (about 3″ not counting the tail) under the desk. Upon seeing it, my daughter said it was so cute and asked if we could keep it. I can only assume that my wife gave her the disease run-down as I took it out to the trash. And just about an hour ago I had 3 more stuck to the 2 pads I put behind the dishwasher – one about 2″ long (again, not counting tail) and 2 little ones about an inch long each. In each case, I grabbed a scrap stick and stuck it to the trap like a handle and shoved the whole thing in a plastic bag, tied it off, and dropped it into our outside trash can. Out of the 4-pack, I only have one sticky trap left. Hopefully it will catch the last of them or ideally remain untouched (and not because they got wise to it).
So while I was not pleased with the task of disposing of the wriggling little buggers, there is a certain satisfaction in it. There is a certain sense of victory. It isn’t as if I protected my family from a pack of thieves (though technically they were stealing from us). But I did man up and it feels good to be the hero in some regard.