Mouse Update

We caught the mouse last night. I found him this morning in one of the glue traps. I've given Sonshine the assignment of checking all the mousetraps every morning, but I always check them first before he gets up, just in case what he's looking for turns out to be a bloody mess. I mostly gave him the assignment to make him feel important, because he gets so jealous that Princess gets to do more "advanced" chores like watering the plants and emptying the dishwasher.

The location where we finally caught him was our "Mormon closet*" (the closet in Bagel's room that is used for food storage). It's probably the most attractive place in our house to a mouse after the wheat grinder, because there's sometimes spillage from the storage bins, and I haven't had a chance to vacuum it up in a long while. The day before yesterday I put two conventional traps in there, and the mouse ate the bait off of them. Yesterday I pulled out the bins to see if there were mouse droppings, and there were, although not many. I swapped out the conventional traps with glue traps yesterday, and that was where we caught him. I had put one trap on each side of the doorway, but when we found him, they were both together and the tip of his tail was stuck to the one that had been moved. Since FH didn't move the trap, we suspect he caught the tip of his tail in the one trap, then dragged it over and got stuck in the other.

He was still alive and twitching when we found him, but at least he didn't scream. I've heard mice can scream when they're trapped in a glue trap. I double-bagged him and put him and his traps out in the garbage can. I hate to do that while he's still alive, but at least suffocation will be a non-violent death. It's him or me, and this is war. If I release him, he'll just come back with ten of his friends. We're trying to sell our house and we can't have a mouse infestation, not to mention that they'll spread disease to my precious kids. The traps are also a danger. Already Sonshine got his finger snapped in one of the traps (although in all fairness, I did show him why not to touch the traps and he deliberately went and touched it anyway as soon as he thought nobody was looking).

So here are the lessons I've learned from this mouse caper:

1. No matter how much stress you are under, it can always be much, much worse.
2. If you are me, it probably will be getting much, much worse very soon.
3. Use glue traps, because while they don't kill instantly and thus are less humane, they are more effective and less harmful to kids, and kids matter more than mice.
4. It pays to stay up until midnight waiting for the mouse so you can see which direction he's running.
5. We need to find a way to cure Sonshine of his insatiable desire to do whatever he's told not to do in order to find out for himself why we said not to do it.
   

* My non-Mormon grandparents coined the term "Mormon closet" to describe a place where food is stockpiled. They thought it was a good idea, especially since my grandma didn't drive (and now my grandpa doesn't either) so they took a leaf from our book and stored some food and called the location their "Mormon closet."