I was minding my own business in the kitchen when I hear some scratching sounds. I look up to see a brown blur come at me and then disappear under the stove. I proceed to have a mild Myocardial Infarction, and when I calm down I realize the culprit is a mouse!
What am I going to do? I hate mice. They carry diseases, and they chew up things, and they’re just nasty!!! [shudder] I hate the thought of killing it, but how else am I going to convince it to leave the premises? I didn’t invite him to come stay with me, and he certainly has no right to just move in and scare the bejesus out of me because he doesn’t fucking pay the rent around here. And even if he did pay rent, he has absolutely no right to scare me.
So I bought one of those glue pad thingys and put some food on it, hoping to trap it and just help it leave my place of residence a little more quickly than it would like to do. And the trap just sat there for days. Mocking me. So finally after a few days, I’m sitting around doing some work when I hear some loud crunching, and I think: “Gotcha!” I give little mousy enough time to fill his gut and get trapped right good. Right? Wrong. That little fucker ate everything on the pad–I think he might have even eaten some of the glue too! He did manage to leave behind some of his fur on the pad, though. I guess just to let lil ol’ stupid me know that he’d been there and partaken of the elegant repast that I was so kind as to lay out for him. Just in case the now missing food didn’t tip me off that he’d come and conquered. The little fucker. :mad:
I didn’t ask for an intelligent mouse to plague me! [sigh] I’ve got enough to contend with dealing with idiots all day long. I don’t want to have to come home to an intelligent mouse scampering and crawling around and getting into mischief. How in the hell did he manage not to get stuck on that glue pad? :mad: I’m just a little upset because I don’t know anything about mousetraps and stuff. Those spring doo-hickeys scare me because I just know I’ll manage to break a few of my fingers trying to get it set up, or maybe I’d break some toes because I’d forget I’d set it out somewhere and step on it. At least with a glue trap, I could get some solvent or something and detach myself from it. Couldn’t I? I’m just about ready to cry because I can’t figure out how to get this mouse to leave my house. This is not negotiable. He absolutely has to go. I’ve put out another glue pad trap, but I doubt he’ll have the good grace to get stuck on it. [sigh] Why me? Why couldn’t that mouse have gone somewhere else and left me alone? Now he’s probably going to go out and tell all his friends that there’s good eats at my place. [shudder]
Time to get a cat (or borrow a friend’s cat for a couple of days). My cat lived with my parents for a few years and every time Mom found evidence of a mouse, she’d keep the cat in for a couple of nights and the problem was solved. (Fortunately, he just killed them and didn’t partially devour them. This may be due to the fact that he’s a male. I seem to recall our female cats being more inclined to “butcher” the kill. Such pratical creatures!)
matt_mcl, hon, what does scott evil have to do with the fact that I have vermin [shudder] in my house? Does he have a Save The Mouse! campaign going on, or what?
Most women yell “RAT” when all they are seeing is a mouse. However, if that thing got loose from the glue, you might reconsider your classification. A cat is the best answer to mice or …s.
I vote get a cat also - we moved into a place last year that had a real rodent problem, and the cat’s fixed it all.
For the first month our cat (Kendra) would deposit about 7-10 mice per day at the doorstep. Then we got another cat (Dawn) and 3 months later - no mice. That was when Kendra decided to go in for bunnies instead.
Ahhhh Memories
“Bunnies aren’t just cute
Like everybody supposes!
They got them hoppy legs
And twitchy little noses!
And what’s with all the carrots?
What do they need
Such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies! Bunnies!
It must be bunnies!
Or maybe midgets?”
Musical Buffy where are you now…
Anyway then Dawn had kittens and Kendra started to stalk them (they did look kinda rodent like for the first couple of weeks).
If you can’t afford a cat just yet, definitely borrow one.
They have little boxy plastic traps that don’t have finger crushing strings, and don’t kill the mouse. You can then toss the box and let the mouse die of starvation, or let it go somewhere not your house.
We used the no-kill trap, which worked really well (admittedly, the fact that our cat would scare the thing half to death first helped convince the mouse that the trap was the best place to be). We put them in corners because they seemed to like to run there and hide. Then we took the traps to a park and let them go. I always felt sorry for them though, because the closest park was a Manhattan park that had large rats running around in it. Poor little mice didn’t stand a chance . . .
Mr. Honey once put down one of those glue traps. That has to be the most inhumane trap ever invented. :mad:
The mouse did indeed get stuck on it and I spent an hour carefully removing him from the trap and peeling the glue off his little feet. I then released him outside.
We purchased 2 of those ultra-sonic pest controllers that plug into the wall and haven’t had a mouse since. Note: Do not use these devices if you have small rodent type pets.
We have mice every winter (we live on the edge of a big forest) and our kitty cats take care of the job. Borrow one for a couple days. They really work! Although cleaning up the decapitated corpse can be kind of a drag. But if you’re lucky, the cat will eat the whole thing! Also, transfer your cereal and pasta and stuff like that to tupperware, cuz they eat cardboard.
When I was in law school, my apartment was suddenly home to a little brown mouse. I know that it’s small but I was amazed at myself because I’d scream bloody murder when I saw it. Which was often. Why?? Because the little shit felt so damn at home, it would just stroll about. I’d be at the desk studying and it’d pop out of a corner and just amble through the living room. It was so at home, I half expected it to come out of the corner with a ping pong ball helmet, riding a little crotch rocket.
Having had pet mice who had to be put down (no, I didn’t pay a vet for euthanasia; a hammer worked just fine), I don’t understand this aversion to the little guys. I’m not saying you should let wild mice eat off your dinner plate or anything (they do still carry diseases), but they’re mostly harmless creatures unless you hurt them. Catch them and release them in the wild (but not in your back yard unless you just want to be doing it again), or kill them instantly whenever you capture one.
Please consider something more humane than a glue trap, unless you find them quickly and kill them immediately. I think the only trap more cruel than that are saw-toothed jaw traps that used to be used by fur trappers.
What am I going to do? I hate mice. They carry diseases, and they chew up things, and they’re just nasty!!! [shudder] I hate the thought of killing it, but how else am I going to convince it to leave the premises? I didn’t invite him to come stay with me, and he certainly has no right to just move in and scare the bejesus out of me because he doesn’t fucking pay the rent around here. And even if he did pay rent, he has absolutely no right to scare me.
I’m just about ready to cry because I can’t figure out how to get this mouse to leave my house. 