Round 1:
Sunday morning, I stumble outside to get the newspaper. While staggering through the garage I see a blur across the floor. A mouse. Can’t have that. So I bait up a trap with peanut butter and go about my business. Sunday night I check the trap. Not sprung, but the bait is all gone. 1st round to the mouse.
Round 2:
Sunday evening. So the most cleaned my trap out, huh? OK, I’ll show him - I’ll use some of that famous engineering logic. This time I bait 4 traps with peanut butter and strategically place them around the garage. Let’s see him get past that! Well, Monday evening rolls around and I see that I have 4 clean, unsprung traps. 2nd round to the mouse.
Round 3:
Monday evening. OK, now it is time to get serious. Once again putting my engineering degree to good use, I deduce that the traps are not sensitive enough. Too much friction. Well, some vegetable oil on the contacting points will fix that. Another round of peanut butter and this time I set 2 of the traps in DIFFERENT spots. I go to sleep satisfied that I proved why I am higher on the food chain. Tuesday morning, no dead mouse. Just 4 clean, unsprung traps. 3rd round to the mouse.
Round 4:
So instead of working today, I sat around trying to figure out how the hell the mouse was beating the traps. Did I need to build a better mousetrap? Once I got home, I went ahead and baited the traps again, but as I did, I noticed how smooth the peanut butter slide on to the trap. AHA! It was creamy peanut butter! The mouse was just licking it off. No pressure, no snap. So, I switch over to the heavy artillery. Jiff extra crunchy. Making sure some of the crunchy went under the pressure plate so the mouse would have to dig it out. 10 minutes later, I have victory! Round 4 and the fight to xizor by way of KO.
Now I face the sad reality that it took me 3 days to outsmart a mouse. What a hollow victory.
Dammit, I’ve been hanging around http://www.spacebattles.com so much lately, my first thought when I saw this thread title was, “Why are we pitting a Falleen prince against Mickey?”
Xizor, you shoulda used those potent pheromones of yours and attracted it to you! i find that an electricized (or whatever) fly swatter works pretty well on those little rodents… and, as a bonus, you get bbq mouse too!
No, but it did keep hitting a blue cat with a mallet and throwing dynamite at it.
Cougarfang: My pheremones don’t work on the women of this planet, so I doubt they would work on a mouse.
Reeder: Don’t remind me. All I need is a bunch of them ganging up on me.
croaker67: As long as there are people like me so inept at mouse catching, we will always have a need for domestic cats.
Geobabe: The rodent didn’t get me, he just got my goat. And I don’t mind, he can have my goat. As long as both of them stay out of my garage.
Spoofe: Your right, the leader of an intergalactic crime organization should have an underling somewhere to rub out mice when necessary. I must’ve forgot.
You can still bait them with peanut butter but they have a much greater percentage of surface area potentially lethal to small rodents.
The key is to figure out what paths through your house are used as escape routes by your little friend. Then put glue traps along those routes. Then startle the mouse. Works like a charm.
