Mäuslein

On Christmas night as we were putting the kids to bed, Allen saw a little mouse dash across the hall from Sarah's room into the bathroom and under the kickplate of the cabinets.  We hoped at first that it had snuck into our house through the open garage door as Allen was out and in doing his top secret Swingset construction in the days leading up to Christmas, but we soon learned to our sorrow that we had more than one furry visitor.  Candice and Bryant stayed up late helping me go through the pantry and toss all of the things on the floor that had mouse bites and then thoroughly clean and mop to make it less inviting.

The next night as we were cleaning up all of the Christmas detritus, I looked under the tree and discovered the veritable smorgasbord they'd been enjoying -- they'd been drinking from the Christmas tree stand and eating the homemade gingerbread ornaments and candy canes off the tree.  Allen cruelly wouldn't let me burn down the house, so we began the quest to eradicate them.  We went through all of the bedrooms upstairs and cleared everything off the floor of the closets and under the beds.  We caught 4 mice in plastic shoeboxes over the week as they came running out of hiding.  Sarah even caught one despite her broken arm.



We decided to asphyxiate them in double ziploc bags with a cotton ball of acetone.  Yuck.

Allen dug out the compost bin outside that they'd been nesting in and 10 mice went running.  Double yuck.

We had an exterminator out and he couldn't find any points of entry into the house and surmised that they must have snuck through the open door between the house and garage sometime while we were bringing in groceries or something like that.  So he set bait boxes outside to poison any that were lurking around outside the house and we set 20 traps inside the house.  We learned that you have to use the old fashioned all metal/wood traps which have very sensitive triggers.  At first we used the ones with the plastic triggers that look like cheese.  Mice got the peanut butter off without setting off the trap.  So we bought the other traps and caught two mice under the kitchen sink.

It has been 2 weeks since then and we haven't seen any more evidence -- no droppings or gnawed chapstick and ziploc bags (of all the weird things for them to go after!).  So I'm hoping for the best.  We're going to leave 10 traps out all around the house as a precaution and keep the outside poison monitored as well.

I'm hoping that I'll be over the psychological trauma before next Christmas and won't refuse to celebrate it ever again.  I don't think I'll be composting or having a live tree again anytime soon, however.  Sorry family and environment.