For the past several days, every time one of us opens the door leading to the basement, a little brown mouse scurries down from the top step, cuts right into the bathroom, and then disappears under the door into the garage. I usually chase him with whatever’s in my hand (trying to trap him with a glass or swat him with a stack of clients’ medical records), but the little brown bastard is too agile to even come close.
Yesterday, Pretty Bride decided that, since it was the one night of the week we’d both be home, it was time to take the fight to the mice. We pulled the cars out of the garage and started looking for their home, which appeared to be near a giant bag of grass seed with a corner nibbled open. Piles and piles of grass seed in the corner of the garage, mixed with stacks of mouse turds (think grains of rice, colored black).
Then I pulled back the insulation from the wall and nearly vomited at the smell: mouse urine, mouse birthing secretions, mouse fornication residue, more mouse turds.
A fat one scurried up the wall as I was vacuuming up the turds and grass seed; I aimed the nozzle at it and frantically tried to suck its well-girthed body into the flexible chord. Fail. He did a u-turn and bolted back to the concrete before sliding under the door to the bathroom.
We put glue traps along all four walls of the garage, catching another baby within 5 minutes of putting them out. Stupid baby.
I walked over to it and watched it squirm and squeak as it wrestled against the adhesive gripping its little bastard mouse feet and its little bastard mouse side.
Me: Does that feel good, little vermin?
Mouse: *squeak*
Me: How do you think it feels to be trapped in an unsellable house full of you and your little fucker mouse friends, huh?
Mouse: *squeak!*
Me: I got glue traps all over this garage. I’m gonna catch your momma, your papa, and all your little mouse siblings. All y’all are going to spend the rest of your sorry, short lives on trays of glue in this hot ass garage. Thirsty. Hungry. And pissing all over yourself. You excited about the next few days?
Mouse:
This morning, I barreled downstairs to check out all the traps.
Nothing.
Just the baby from last night, lying motionless on its side in the trap next to my car. I trudged back upstairs to get ready for work.
I was about 2 miles down the road when my phone rang.
Me: Hello?
Pretty Bride: Did you look at the traps? I’m afraid to look.
Me: Yeah. Nothing but the baby from last night.
PB: Do you think they’re laughing at you from their new mouse home? I bet they are.
Me: I don’t know… let me know next time you drive your Odyssey.
PB: Ass.
You should buy a bag of snakes and let them loose. That’ll show the dam mice.
@avitable, If you ever have a retail store, I bet you have bags of snakes on sale every day.
Perhaps you should consider nuking the garage if the traps don’t work. Then all you’d have left would be cockroaches!
@I’d love that, actually. Then my insurance company would buy the house (sort of)!
The one time our house became mouse-infested was due to a bag of grass seed. That shit is evil. There should be a warning on every bag, “Plant this shit in your yard NOW! Or put it in the garage and enjoy the mouse-infestation to come. It’s bubonic plague time, baby!”
@CMG, I had no idea they liked grass seed so much. Thanks for telling me, by the way. And I thought we were friends.
My Japanese husband and I once stayed in an old farmhouse on Kangaroo Island, in South Australia.
The kitchen played host to a mouse. A rogue mouse, it seemed, adrift from its nest and family.
Through some nimble work with an upturned Tupperware container, we actually managed to capture the cuddly little fellow, humanely.
The hub walked out the back door, to release this creature back into the wild, a safe distance from the house.
“You can’t do that.” I warned him. “Mice are an introduced species to Australia. They eat the plants and grains which nourish delicate, endangered native species. We have to kill it.”
“What a strange logic Australia has!” he exclaimed. “You want to destroy this poor, innocent mouse, yet you object to us hunting big ugly whales like we have for centuries and is a part of our culture!”
With that, he muttered something which was probably Japanese for “ass”, and slammed the back door.
But I didn’t really care. As Avitable reminds us, all you need is a good snake, and the job is done.
And the last time I checked, Australia had snakes. Good ones.
@headbang8, Interesting story. He should have just put out glue traps and let them die slowly!
A hungry stray cat would take care of that whole mouse family!
@Sybil Law, But I don’t like cats! They make me sneeze.
If I was your wife, I’d be lacing up my walking shoes. No freaking WAY I’d get in a vehicle that had been parked in that garage.
@Britt, Yeah. I don’t think she’s thought out the fact that they can totally crawl into the car probably.
We had mice in an apartment in university. I remember trying to study one night when all of a sudden, SNAP! I then got to listen to the damn thing die slowly over the next several hours (the traps weren’t in a tenant-accessible part of the apartment).
@SF Dad, Did it lull you gently to sleep? I didn’t think so.
and this is why i have cats. (poor baby mouse)
but they also bring in bleeding baby bunnies. which is great, if you like that kind of thing. i sense you might. so yah, get a cat.
@leel, Bunnies taste good! mmmmm….rabbit.
Mouse hunting has become a favorite past time of my husbands. He set a trap once with cheese on it because all the mice in the cartoons like cheese. It ate the cheese off trap, the trap was still intact. The next day he put peanut butter on it and the mouse ate the peanut butter off the trap, trap still intact in the morning.
This is when it became personal. This is when it became serious.
He tied a fruit loop to a piece of dental floss, put peanut butter on the fruit loop, tied the other end of the dental floss onto the trap. That is when the husband became the great mouse hunter that he is today. I should blog about this, don’t worry I’ll link you.
So what you need is several dozen mouse traps, a box of fruit loops, a jar of peanut butter and dental floss. Good luck.
@sue, You should blog about this! I appreciate your advice, but that sounds like a good bit of work.
Since muskrats are rodents and mice are rodents, shouldn’t y’all have some sort of telepathy/code?
Muskrat: “Squeak, squeakers!” (Listen up, bitches!)
Mice: “Squeak?” (Yes?)
Muskrat: “SQUEAK SQUEAK squeak, squeaking squeaks!” (GET THE FUCK OUT now, fucking parasites!)
Mice: “Ohhhhhhh, squeak!” (Oh, no!)
Muskrat: “Ohhhhh, squeak, squeakers!” (Oh, yes, bitches!)
Mice: {flee the Muskrat house}
It’s all in the tone of your voice and inflection.
@countessa, I love this tutorial. I’m totally going to try it in the morning.
We caught a mouse that way and then felt bad for it.
So i made my hubby end its life ‘quickly’ with a swift hammer blow to the head. The only problem- my husband felt bad hitting it really hard. ?
so it finally died..after several semi-hard blows to his little mouse head.
I think hubby has never recovered.
@jade, That is both tragic and hilarious. I like letting them sit in the glue for a day or two and then tossing them into the garbage can, so that it’s a “hands off” killing.
We had a rat problem, twice. It was nasty ass disgusting. Fortunately (?) we didn’t have to chase live rats, we discovered them when they were dead and rotting and full of maggots. Good times.
Isn’t home ownership a real joy?
@karen, Especially home ownership while trying to sell. PURE JOY!
My husband’s company can help you. Seriously.
@crazymomtats, email me his contact info, please! i tried to email you, but it got kicked back.