There’s a Mouse in my House

I hate mice!! I just can’t stand finding mouse poop in places that I want to be mouse free. But those nice little sign posts they leave for us seem to show up in the worst places. At first I only saw one mouse run along the wall past the front door shortly after midnight each night, but now they sometimes run by a couple times a day.

One night I had to get up to go to the bathroom. I went to the one in the hall so I wouldn’t wake up Jasmine. As I was getting ready to leave, a mouse ran right past my bare foot and under the cabinet. Scare me silly! I don’t think I screamed out loud because the girls didn’t wake up but I most definitely did in my head. Talk about freaking out a half asleep, blurred eyed woman. That certainly woke me up.

I have a mattress on the floor next to my bed for Jasmine or Lily, you know just in case they decide to sleep by themselves :-O. I was lying on my bed one afternoon trying to get Jasmine down for a nap when I noticed mouse poop on the comforter on their mattress. Does that mean they are crawling into my bed at night too?? I haven’t seen any actual evidence that they’ve been in my bed but I have to admit it makes it a lot harder to fall asleep with that on your mind. Like I need the added stress!!

Disappointing fact – our Chihuahua is a very poor mouser. Should have gotten a terrier.

We’ve already caught 6 mice and I know there are more because they are bold little suckers. We caught a couple with the regular Victor snap traps. I guess the mice got wiser and more careful because we stopped catching them. So we tried the new design of Victor trap and caught a couple more, but then those traps became ineffective. We tried using one of those “catch’em live and release ‘em outside”, “humane” traps. The “humane” trap worked at my brother’s house, but not mine. Didn’t catch a single mouse with it. Most recently we tried the glue trays – it’s like flypaper for mice. We got two more with the glue trays. I think we’ll switch back to the snap traps because as much as I hate mice I prefer them to have a quick death rather than suffer a slow demise in a quagmire of sticky goo.

I thought of using baited poison but with the toddler and the puppy that’s not an option. Besides my Granny and Pop tried the poison at their old place once. It worked but the critter died in some inaccessible place in the walls and stunk the place up with decomposition odor for a couple weeks. Not something I want to experience. Isn’t it great that we can learn from other’s mistakes?

Anybody got any suggestions for eradicating the mice?