Happening #2

The next thing that happened has never happened in this home - at least, not since we've lived here. We've lived in this town home since 2003!

We got mice, and I'm not ashamed of it! Okay, maybe a little, but I've realized that even nicer homes get them. I think the frigid weather lured them into our laundry room. So thankful that they are isolated in the laundry room and not the whole house!

We use the laundry room for storage also. We had a brand new bag of rice on the floor. I found that the corner of the bag had been chewed off. At first, I wasn't sure if it had been ripped by the door. My mother and father had come to my house that day, and they confirmed that it seemed like it was a mouse.

We conducted a test to verify. We cleaned up the bag of rice, laid out some grains of rice on the floor and closed the door. When I checked a few hours later, they were gone. It felt like some monster had come and taken those grains. I couldn't believe it, so I laid out some more grains of rice and closed the door. They were gone a few hours later! Really, it felt like some monster mice were back there.

My husband freaked out! Did I tell you that he has a phobia fear of mice? Well, we enlisted the only one in our family who is not afraid: A3. My baby. We gave him the important title of "mouse hunter." He would check every few hours to see if we had caught any mice.

First, we got sticky traps. The guy at Home Depot told my husband that those would catch the mice. He also warned my husband to get the mice before they bore offspring (every three weeks or so). We stuck grains of rice on the sticky traps and left them out. What did we find? The mice ate the rice and took off. We could see the tiny tracks they had made on the sticky traps.

Tip #1:  When setting out a traditional mouse trap,

                        set it in the middle of an opened and flattened

                       plastic bag. This makes clean up a lot easier.

That is when my husband went back to Home Depot and got traditional snap traps. We put peanut butter and cheese on them. That is when we saw some progress. We caught four mice. I had to pick up a few of them and tightly close the bags. One was caught in the trap and still alive. A1 and A3 had to use tongs to pick up the trap and put it in a ziploc. Boy, did I sterilize those tongs!

Tip #2:  Don't look at their eyes. Trust me on this one.

We had quite a few days of no more mice, and then we found another one. Only this time, the mouse was a lot smaller than the other ones. Not sure if it is a youngling of the other mice. We are finding that those little critters are eating the food off of the traps and getting away! Now, we are re-strategizing.

Tip#3:  Check your house for mice.