MICE...

A week or so ago, Shelly was organizing a few things in the pantry and came across evidence of a critter loose in the house. A package of peanut butter cheese crackers had been chewed on and some little droppings were on the bottom shelf. Let me tell you, there is NEVER just one mouse when you see evidence of a critter.

I went out and picked up a couple of glue traps and put them in the pantry, baited with a piece of animal cracker and a dab of peanut butter. That should get them. The next morning, one of my traps had been successful - sort of. The trap was moved and had all sorts of mouse hair and droppings on it, but no mouse. It must have been a heck of a show during the night. I wonder what Sweetie the Chihuahua thought about it. Surely she heard the commotion from her bed not 10 feet away.

Well, I moved the traps around a little, and put one in the garage behind the freezer where there was some mouse poop. About an hour later, I had a mouse. A quick thump to the head and he was history. One down, hopefully not many more to go. Back in late 2001 we had a mouse in the house. A couple of months later, I had caught 14 or 15 mice, one rat, and one baby rabbit on my glue traps. (the baby rabbit was carefully removed and went on to be eaten by a resident owl a short-time later). Thankfully, MOST of the critters were in the garage and not in the house.

Well, fast forward to Saturday. We had gone to the College Station to see the Aggies play (that's another rant for another day). We got home pretty late and I was checking the traps. I was looking in the corner of the garage near one of my storage cabinets that REALLY needed to be cleaned out and saw more mouse sign. Lots of mouse sign. Like lots of paper and stuff that had been chewed up I opened the cabinet and saw IT. A mouse nest. Crap, those little jokers were setting up housekeeping in my garage. No mice visible, but there was a nest. I set a glue trap and also put out a fancy new electric trap I bought. War has been declared.

This new electric trap is pretty slick. You put in 4 AA batteries and put a little bit of peanut butter in the trap. When Mr Mouse walks in to get his snack and steps on the little metal plates ZAP! I'm happy to report, the trap works as advertised. 2 Mousies down.

I got up early Sunday morning and started cleaning the garage. A full I have a trashcan full of JUNK that needed to be thrown out and found another nest in the clutter. In the next night or two, I'll finish the job and once again have both cars in the garage.

I wonder how many more I'll find. I checked tonight and there were no more signs (droppings) in the areas I cleaned out yesterday, so maybe there aren't too many more. One can only hope...