Friday, December 21, 2007

A Better Mousetrap

Many thanks to Leah for sharing her, um, traumatic mouse-catching experience in the comments of yesterday's post. You don't have to go read it; just make sure you use the good old-fashioned kind of traps, that kill the creature quickly. Or you may be sorry....

And we do use those old-fashioned kind of traps; but apparently we have smart mice, mice who know how to lick all the peanut butter off the trap without springing it (and who then go take another dump in my silverware drawer - thanks). I hate being outsmarted by rodents. This situation is going to give a whole lot more meaning to "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," won't it? I mean, "not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse"......we should be so lucky.

And what about those goodies we leave out for Santa? I can just hear the kids on Christmas morning: "Oooh, look, Mommy, Santa ate some of the cookie! See? You can see where he nibbled it. Hey! What are those little brown things on the plate?" I can't wait.

I have to give Larry credit - he noticed I moved his chair. He even put 2 and 2 together and deduced that I do not like the chair. We're making progress, folks; stay tuned.

We've been having fun telling Susie about Santa Claus and she seemed to be pretty excited about it. Or maybe not. Today she said, "Santa not get me." With apparent relief. Maybe we sang, "You'd better watch out..." a little too much.

I'm trying to figure out how people find time to get divorced; Larry and I are too busy arguing about every stupid little thing in our lives to involve any lawyers. Let's see, the chair, the living room paint, our unsealed grout, and now....Theo's MP3 player. I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work; I'm thinking that the USB ports on our monitor aren't working properly, but Larry refuses to concede that this may be a possibility and says that it is a faulty player. The dumbest aspect of this argument is that neither of us has the faintest idea what we are talking about.

Forget about building a better mousetrap (though, actually, we could use one of those); someone needs to build a more user-friendly (as in idiot-proof) MP3 player.

Oh, dear, someone's coughing. Duty calls.

11 comments:

  1. A better mouse trap? Well you could use the rat poison, that gets them every time. Just keep it out of reach of kids. Then there is moth balls. Mice hate those too, but so do most humans. You could find the hole where they are coming in and stuff it with steal wool, they hate that too.

    I once had a mouse that would sleep on our queen size bed in our guest room. I opened the door and there he was, just chilling in the middle of the bed. When he saw me he ran. So, I put one of those sticky traps on the bed and that silly mouse actually came back to sleep on the bed. But this time he got stuck. Ha!! I then had to call for back up to remive the screaming mouse from my house. There is nothing fun about mice.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He He, use cheese. The mice have to pull the cheese off the trap, and that takes a bit more force than licking peanut butter.
    I wouldn't go with the rat poison. What happens? Well, the mice get sick and die in your walls. You know what happens next?
    Of course you do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're still sick? You poor thing...I hope you kick it soon.

    Mice, yuck, yuck, yuck. We had a hairy visitor earlier this month. I was horrified. But it ate the cheese, set off the trap and died. The end.

    Heidi

    ReplyDelete
  4. ...and btw, the sun rises at around 9:30 am and sets at around 3 pm here today, the shortest day of the year. Not so bad. But even when it's daylight, the sun only creeps above the horizon for about 10 minutes (it's mountainous here). The rest of the 'daylight' is just light shining from behind the mountains.
    In the north, however, they won't see the sun for another 3 weeks. Yikes!

    Heidi

    ReplyDelete
  5. you know divorce just takes along time, LOL. My first husband and I seperated in 1998. We didn't get divorced (the paperwork wasnt filedHow sad is that? And we weren't even together, so I dont know what my problem was. Life with kids I guess.

    Man Leah is just full of mice killing information isnt she, LOL.
    ~Jennifer

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am laughing so hard at you right now, which is rather rude as I don't even know you. Fun blog btw!

    We had mice and I HATE them but you know what I hate more? RATS! Yes, we had a rat last year. I am still grossed out by that!
    I think we may have mice too but as long as they stay in the walls....

    You said you have a toddler right? I think the mice love all the free food toddlers create. Yum. Mice heaven:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah, just keep the rat poison away from the kids. Right! What kind of kid does Andrea have? So, here's hoping you all get over the cough soon. Make someone take care of you so you don't die and leave them to fend for themselves. I love the disposable kitchen floor idea, and I so hear you on the chair thing. Thanks a million for all the laughs.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Our trick for catching mice - form carmel around where you put the peanut butter. I mean really form it so it sticks on tight. The mice where we live absolutely LOVE carmel. We caught four mice last week that way. I'm glad we caught them, but grossed out and shocked that there were four. I wonder if there is some saying that says if you catch four mice, there are 400 more you can't see? (shiver)

    ReplyDelete
  9. toni - this is very interesting. Now, not only do I have to figure out how to make popcorn balls for the tree, but I'm supposed to be rolling up caramel-peanut butter death treats for the mice?

    And, yes, the time we caught 4 mice (in the other house) made me feel sick also - as if they were only the tip of the iceberg, as it were.

    ReplyDelete
  10. leah - We can't use the cheese. My oldest (who is nice enough to set the traps for me) is deathly allergic to dairy. We don't want to kill him off along with the rodents! And we definitely don't want to go the poison route - we've already dealt with one dead mouse in the furnace duct, and it isn't exactly my fondest memory.

    ReplyDelete
  11. My husband and I don't have any children, but we have two cats. Should be no problem with mice, right?

    One night I woke to a louder than usual bumping and thumping out in the dinning room. I got up to investigate and there was Coco, standing in the middle of the room with that look that says, "What? I'm just standing in the middle of the room doing nothing in the middle of the night." I noticed something wrong with her face and got my glasses to go in for a better look.

    UGH! A mouse was wriggling between her teeth! I yelled for Curt..."It's Coco...and she has a mouse! EEK!"

    The love of my life, my gallant knight jumps from the bed to my rescue. In a flash, he averts the dining room and runs full speed down the steps to the basement, yelling, "Don't worry, Jodi, I'll get it!!"

    In a staredown with Coco, I hear my fearless knight running back up the steps with what I could only imagine would be some ingenious BETTER MOUSETRAP.

    Coco hears him, drops the mouse, and Daisy goes at it. I'm yelling, the cats are going wild, the mouse is squealing, and my knight arrives!!

    With an orange plastic pumpkin leftover from Halloween.

    Yes, ladies, this is the better mousetrap my brave and brilliant husband comes to rescue me with. (I maybe should mention here that he's just a little HDHD.)

    He runs to the mouse and covers it with the pumpkin. "There," he says.

    I think it goes without saying that his solution was less than desirable. For the next two weeks Coco and Daisy had a REAL LIVE cat toy.

    ReplyDelete