The Mouse Issue

Danny and I lived upstairs in this building for a year and occasionally the pest control guy came in and put his roach goop on the hinges of the cupboards. The last time he was there, he asked if I had seen any mouse activity. I was surprised because I had never seen a mouse and hoped I never would. Then we moved.

Moving downstairs was a great decision-the new apartment is at least three times bigger. And came with a bonus. A free mouse. The day we went and stocked up on groceries, it made its first appearance. Danny saw it and told me, so I went to get a trap. First, the selection of mousetraps is astounding. After looking them over, I decided on a medium-sized spinning disk of a trap, that a mouse would enter, the trap would spin and kill it, and I could dispose of it, all without seeing the mouse. I set the traps baited with cheese and waited. And watched the mouse run every time I turned the kitchen light on.

I went back to the store and bought some good old-fashioned snappy traps. I mentioned to the cashier that I was waging a war, because this mouse would not go in the trap that I had previously bought. She said that Jersey City mice were very smart. I told her that I would be using peanut butter this time, and that I would win. She said mice like bread, too. I said that I would not be making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for anything I was trying to kill.

I came home and set two traps with peanut butter. By the next morning, it was dead. I remember my grandpa disposing of just the mouse and reusing the trap when I was little, but there was no way I was going to get that close to this thing. I threw the whole thing away, and moved the second trap to the place I caught the first mouse. I've always heard that if you have one mouse you have six, so I waited again. We got nothin'.

I happened to notice just the other day, that the trap had no peanut butter, but I didn't give it a second thought. After all, we hadn't seen any mice, nor had we caught any. I left a rather large bag of trash in the kitchen and when I got home, Danny said a mouse had jumped out of the bag and ran into the wall. I reset the trap and added more peanut butter. Not long after, I heard a noise but wanted to wait to investigate. The next morning, when I looked at the trap, I saw that there was no peanut butter but the trap was unsnapped.

I stopped at the store and bought four more traps. Just in case. When I got home, I smeared three traps with peanut butter, and turned off the light and waited. Again. Mere moments later, SNAP! Then I heard another noise. I could only imagine the mouse dragging the trap to the middle of the floor and was not looking forward to checking that out. I asked Danny to look and he reported that nothing was in the trap. I double-checked and saw that the mouse was indeed caught, but only by the tip of his nose. I had tot wait a full day to make sure it was dead before disposing of it.

I'm going to put on my colender helmet and get my jar of peanut butter and see if we have any more mice. If so, it won't be for long now!