Mousetraps

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning know that I am capable of murder.  (Remember last January's Stinkbug?)  Today, I am not in love with killing mice.  But I am in love with the mousetraps that do the killing for me.  Be grateful that I spared you pictures.

Yesterday, I finally got around to setting three traps to catch those little devils who've been stealing my pistachio nuts.  Two traps were placed in the kitchen pantry and the third in Jenna's bathroom, which is right behind the pantry.  My home is a log home.  Log home construction is not as tight as stick-frame.  In other words, the resident mice don't have to be rocket scientists to be able to find ways to get to the food they want.  The trap in Jenna's bathroom faced the "hole" next to the heat register where we suspected the mice were entering.

Last evening, I heard a SNAP! inside the pantry and knew immediately that a mouse had been caught.  But the ruckus behind the pantry doors continued, and I knew that the little bugger wasn't dead.  Yuck.  What now?  I decided to wait . . . keeping the pantry doors closed, of course.

This morning, I carefully opened the pantry doors, expecting to be greeted by a dead (or dying) mouse.  Alas, one of the traps was sprung with no mouse in its jaws.  And the other trap was nowhere to be found.  I began moving things around, and found the missing trap behind the recycling bin.  It, too, was mouseless!  That clever mouse had freed himself from the jaws of death, rendering said jaws inoperable in the process.

The thing about trying to catch mice is that you have to keep up with it.  No slacking or they will just multiply and make your life even more miserable.  So I decided to reset the two remaining traps immediately.  Now Jenna had told me that the mice had "moved" the trap in her bathroom, but what she didn't know before she left to return to Vermont today was that the "mover" was the mouse inside the trap.  Thank god he was now dead.  I tossed him outside and reset the trap in the same place.

And now I wait.  I've been contemplating life before mousetraps.  What did the early settlers do?  Blast them with their muskets?  Aim at them with their bows and arrows?  Although we all await the possibility that someone might invent a better mousetrap, for now, I am in love with the ones I have.

Terry:  1
Mice:  2