Little Mousie, in my Housie

A few weeks ago, while Miranda and Savannah were here, I first spotted this little guy. Then most of the family also had mouse sightings.

Yes, he was quite cute and he seemed fairly unconcerned about us. Fortunately for him, I can't kill the mousie in cold blood.

So cute! I almost wanted to just let him stay. Then I thought about his little mouse paws running over my floor and I wanted to vomit. He was spotted several more times, and I didn't do anything because he is adorable and he wasn't pooping where I could see, and he wasn't eating any food that I could see.

However, I did eventually get to Walmart and I got some traps. They scare me. I managed to set up 4 of them and within a few days we snapped a mouse. I made Dan dispose of it.

A few nights later, I was up late with Rylee and heard scuffling and spotted his friend, hopping down my stairs! The little bugger boldly jumped down in front of me and scurried in a leisurely fashion around the shelf of movies. It was bad enough thinking the mousies were confined to the basement, but it was an intolerable thought that they might be venturing upstairs!!

So it was war. I went to the commissary today and discovered that among the several options for disposing of mice, my choices were 2 snap traps for $3.69, or 2 circular no-touch traps for $3.69. I got them both. I know the snap traps work, but I was delighted to try out this new circular trap that doesn't bite if you do it wrong. I put on my peanut butter and put out the 2 circular traps.

I wasn't expecting anything until nighttime at least, but as I was moving laundry over at 8pm, I heard scuffling noises. I looked over at my trap. It has 3 settings- Set, Not Set, and Caught. The trap was pointing to Not Set. Hmmmmm..... I know it is a smart mousie, since he managed to lick all the peanut butter off one of the original snap traps, so I picked up the trap to check it. It felt empty, so I went to set it and something moved! I, of course, screamed like a girl and dropped it. I shouted for Dan, who is only slightly less squeamish than I am. He swept the trap up with a broom and we slid it into a gallon zip lock bag. We were trying to see if there was a mousie in it and there was a tail sticking out the door of the trap. As we stared at it in fascination, we decided it wasn't moving, so the trap must have worked. It was suppose to kill the thing. It was also suppose to point to "Caught" when it did, and it actually did neither. As I twisted the trap, still enclosed in the bag, the mouse popped out. Again, I screamed like a little girl and threw it on the floor.

So now I had a mouse in a gallon zip lock bag, racing around on the floor. Joshua and Marian were screaming. Rylee saw everyone jumping and screaming and promptly joined in. We didn't know what to do with an ALIVE mouse! Dan stepped up and picked it up. I was all for just tossing the whole thing into the outside trash, but Joshua and Dan took him outside and released him at the fence line. I just hope he has learned his lesson!