It gets dumped into a nearby open space.  That’s right folks, this morning we captured mouse #2, this one had the will to live (and a penchant for cookies and peanut butter) and chose to become captured in the live trap as opposed to the kill and contain.

We do have Lava to thank for alerting us to this latest entrapment.  This morning I was downstairs and had just let Lava in from outside, while Noah was upstairs getting Logan dressed.  Lava did her usual routine of sniffing the floor, looking for any nibbles she could find.  She must have caught a whiff of the mouse as she started dancing around the trap.  She would strain and lean to sniff the box without actually having to get close to it.  I called up to Noah to relay Lava’s behavior, and as I was doing so, she started growling at the trap.  At that time, I went upstairs to finish dressing Logan so Noah could come down and investigate.  Lo and behold, there was a mouse in the trap!  Noah dumped him out in a nearby field, but not the one behind our house.  Perhaps he will become food for our neighborhood owl.  When Noah came back inside, Lava was rewarded with a milk bone.  Good doggy!

Noah mentioned later this morning that he thought he heard something in the kitchen last night that sounded like a mouse, but thought, nah, we caught him.  Ooops.  Noah he’s just going to be paranoid about noises coming from that room.  At least the food in our pantry is now protected by Rubbermaid.

So now, that’s two mice we’ve had in our kitchen.  I really hope that’s the end of them.  As soon as Noah has the opportunity he’s going to scour the outside of the house and the crawlspace to see if he can tell where the intruders are entering the house.  And then, with any luck, we can prevent any more from coming in (more likely trap the ones that are already in).

Our “adventures” with a mouse living in our kitchen finally came to an end early yesterday morning (we hope).  Around dark:thirty (I think it was around 4am) I heard a noise, which in itself if surprising considering I sleep like the dead, and probably only heard the noise as I was not fully asleep due to a bought with food poisoning.  Anyway, I woke Noah to tell him I heard a noise (of which Lava didn’t even react to).  He asked what I thought it was and I said it sounded like a mouse trap.  I thought he was going to get up and investigate but he fell back asleep, as did I.

After getting up an hour or so later, I mostly laid around or dragged myself into the bathroom to be sick, but Noah went to check the traps and voila! One of the kill and contain traps had been tripped!  There is no escaping that trap, which Noah threw in the dumpster outside.  So yay! No more mouse in the kitchen!

All you proponents of live traps, keep in mind that the mouse had to crawl around, over, or through the tunnel on the live trap to get to the pantry and into the death trap.  He had a choice.  And the bait of choice for him was not peanut butter but a Southwestern Ranch Baked Lays potato chip.

So now we just need to clean the pantry, again, and clean under the sink cabinet (and of course, when I say we I mean Noah), figure out how to disinfect under the cabinet (Raid? Lysol?) and put our food back in the pantry (still in plastic tubs).  Maybe then my kitchen can return to a level of turd-free normalcy.

“I like Mouse Trap. You roll your dice, you move your mice and nobody get’s hurt.” – Bob the Tomato (Veggie Tales)

Good advice, Bob, except we don’t actually want the mouse to keep inhabiting in our kitchen.  Up until last night, we’ve been using old school mouse traps – we used what we had on hand (thanks to the previous owners of our house):

Time-tested devices that are supposed to permanently trap our furry little intruder  (read: neck-sapped/DOA).  However, these traps don’t work with ninja mice, which apparently is what we have living in our house.  Is anyone else picturing a cartoon mouse a-la Indiana Jones, trading a weighted bag of sand for a treasure to prevent the booby trap?  No?  Just me? Did I mention, that I set off one of these traps 3 different times with my shoe?  Anyway, the other night while watching TV we heard the trap trigger.  Noah went up to check (because I refuse to find a dead mouse in my kitchen), and what did he find?  An empty trap with missing bait (a piece of cheddar).  When I called up to the kitchen to ask if the mouse had been caught Noah replied, “No, but we’ve successfully fed it.”  The mouse was MIA but he did leave some fleas on the floor.  Apparently, the trap spooked the fleas and caused them to jump ship.  Three cheers for bubonic plague!  Ugh!  A little spray and at least they were dead.

Backtracking a little, Wednesday after picking-up Logan from his nanny’s, he and I went shopping for plastic containers in which to store food.  However, we didn’t get around to using them as we wanted to disinfect the pantry first and toss out anything the mouse got into.  Saturday night Noah spent an hour or so emptying the pantry and cleaning the shelves.  Turns out the mouse prefers Cheetos, Carnation Instant Breakfast and dried beans (one particular bean out of a variety of 15 – he actually made a little pile of the unwanted beans).  Once cleaned, Noah restocked the pantry, with a lot more empty shelves than when he started do to the amount of food we tossed.

Yesterday morning, our infiltrator was back and attacked a defenseless muffin mix package (honey bran, in case you were wondering).  Gah!  Noah went shopping again yesterday for more plastic bins (we should buy stock in Sterilite) and we packed all the food away.  However, these bins are currently just sitting on our kitchen floor as we have to, once again, disinfect the shelves.  Noah also bought a fancy new mouse trap, one that will prevent me from having to see – or tempt Lava to munch on a dead mouse:

Noah tried to buy some of these traps on Thursday but Ace was sold out.  That must mean they work well, right?  One trap was baited with peanut butter and placed on the floor next to the pantry.  The second trap was baited with bread and placed on a shelf in the pantry.  Finally, we thought, we should catch this varmint!  But alas, this morning, both traps were still empty.

And so, the hunt continues…

Things I like to find in my kitchen:

• No dirty dishes
• Food simmering on the stove or in the crock-pot
• A fresh bouquet of flowers on the table

Unfortunately, none of those were what I saw this morning as I readied for work.  Instead, I heard a noise near the pantry and saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye.  I pondered over whether the refrigerator just kicked on/off and if there was a light or something underneath that I had never noticed before.  Those thoughts only lasted mere moments as by then, I saw the culprit – a mouse – scurry out the other side of the fridge, under the front of the stove and then into a crevice between the toe kick and cabinet by the sink.  Awesome!

Now, Noah had worked very very very late and was still upstairs sleeping (Logan too was asleep), however, I ran up the stairs screaming Noah’s name to wake him up.  I think I then shook him awake yelling that there was a mouse in the kitchen!  I am not afraid of mice. I had several as pets growing up.  But there’s just something about finding one in your kitchen, coming out of your pantry and running across the floor that is not a pleasant experience.

Noah got up (Logan slept through the chaos) and went into our crawl space to get some traps, which he set-up two along the toe kicks.  He didn’t bait them, and we had to keep Lava from sniffing them.  By the time I left, the mouse was still MIA.  Noah didn’t think it would take too long for it to get caught, but I’ve talked to him a couple times since I left the house this morning and he didn’t mention catching the mouse before he left for work.  So, when I get home today I am hoping I don’t find:

• A dead mouse in the trap (mainly because I don’t want to have to be the one to deal with it and I don’t need to see that…
• A partial dead mouse in the trap, because that means a certain dog of mine got the munchies (this has happened before) and thus I need to make her vomit.
• A trap stuck to Lava’s face.  This is possible and would not surprise me.  Perhaps then, if that’s the case, it may be a good thing she’s a wooly beast right now.

Over the weekend, Noah brought me a container out of the pantry that had a few little brown somethings on top.  He asked me what I thought they were.  I said they didn’t look like poop any of my mice had dropped.  They looked more like caraway seeds or weird dead bugs (which bugs in the pantry wouldn’t be ideal either).  I guess now we know what they were…yuck!

Since we live near several open spaces, I supposed it was inevitable for a mouse to infiltrate our kitchen.  And Lava is a terrible house cat.

On the way home today, Logan and I are stopping at the store and buying some more plastic storage containers.  Who knows what that little guy has munched on so far…or how many of his friends he has invited to the smorgasbord!  Oh and can you tell just how excited I am to disinfect my pantry!  Better plan – I’ll take care of the baby and Noah can clean out the food and disinfect the shelves.  Yes, much better idea.