It’s alive!

Tina and the boys heard the “snap” again while they were eating breakfast this morning. They thought it was by the cat food again, but I didn’t think they could hear a trap in the garage from the dining room. I was right – it was under the stove where I had set two traps over the weekend. Not only was this one alive but it was squeaking up a storm!

I pulled out trap/mouse and put them in the middle of the kitchen floor. Eventually, both cats became interested enough to check it out. I cruelly shot some video with my digital camera while Ming had a look. I should warn you that these videos will be upsetting if you don’t like seeing mice in traps:

I only let this go on for a couple of minutes before I dropped him in a salsa jar with baking soda and vinegar. It was all over in about 15 seconds. (Thanks for the great advice, Thane!)

Finally, here’s a few more from YouTube:

Snap!

This morning I followed my usual routine before departing for work:

  • Wake
  • Shower
  • Dress
  • Check email

While performing the last task, I heard a loud “SNAP” which was definitely in close proximity to my office. I peeked around the corner by the CD shelf and saw that the mouse trap there was now upside down, but appeared to be empty. I picked it up to reset it only to find that it was not empty. A very small mouse was twitching and expelling its dying breath. I set it down and returned to my office to finish reading email. After a few minutes I returned to the trap and found that the mouse was dead.

Sunday I repositioned all the traps and it has proven to be a good idea. Sunday night we got one by the cat food and now this one by my office.

Hey, I’m gonna get you, too

Another day, another mouse trapped beneath the planet of the dishwasher. One wrinkle: Tina heard it snap in the afternoon but refused to look.

Thomas and Tina cleaned out his room on Monday, including removing the large candy stockpile underneath his bed. He is glad that he has no more mice in his room but upset that mice have to die for his freedom.

Another one bites the dust

I re-baited the traps with peanut butter yesterday and changed the location of a couple. This morning we caught two more: one in Thomas’ room and the other under the dishwasher. The one under the dishwasher was still alive and had dragged the trap to an inconvenient location for retrieval. I had to move it with the broom handle before I could get a hold of it. After I did I saw the tail twitch and then his legs started to move. Both the boys said they were horrified but couldn’t stop watching the little bugger running in midair as the trap held his crushed little head down. I dropped them both in the trash. I suppose I could have mercifully killed the live one, but after discussing it with Victor Saturday night, I was dissuaded by the prospect of splatter and ooze.

OK, I think that’s gross enough for the day!

Nothing can do me wrong

I burned MP3 CDs for Graham and Thomas shortly after Christmas so they both could have some new music. For some reason, Graham has latched onto a song called “Helmet” by a capella band The Bobs. He listens to it over and over and has committed the words to memory. A couple of weeks ago he started basketball practice and is playing in his first game today. His skills were raw to start, but Tina has been practicing dribbling and passing with him everyday and he’s getting much better.

Thomas has been engrossed with finishing The Legend of Zelda on Wii. They’re not allowed to play Wii during the week, so he’s been playing Runescape, a massively-multiplayer online role-playing (MMOR) game, after finishing his homework every day. He listens to cello music in bed at night while he’s reading. Sometimes he listens to science podcasts while he’s trying to get to sleep.

When Jan and Tom were here over the holidays, Tom mounted our dishwasher to the counter to keep it from tipping forward when the door is open. While working on it, he found what he described as mouse droppings under the dishwasher. Since we had never seen mice or any sign of mice in our house, we didn’t really believe it. Then last week came into the family room asking who had been eating his two pound Hershey Bar. We took a look and it had a very small tear in it and a perfect semi-circle eaten out of one corner. With tiny little teeth marks.

That night we bought a bunch of cheap mouse traps (Does Victor have a patent on that design? They look exactly the same as the ones we used 30 years ago.) and one “live” trap because Thomas asked. One went off the first night but had no mouse. Today as I was making eggs for myself I glanced over at the one on the counter and found that it had a tiny little mouse in it. Graham initially volunteered to be “in charge” of emptying the traps but when faced with an actual dead mouse, he begged off. Our success led us to check the four other traps and found a larger mouse under the dishwasher.

When I was a kid, I was “in charge” of emptying the traps in our house. I was the only boy in the house at the time, so I suppose that’s why I drew the duty. I really disliked it especially when the trap on the heat register caught one. By the time I would find it in the morning, it was half-cooked and pretty disgusting. I don’t know where I was supposed to put the mice, but I always dropped them into the two-foot space between the house and back porch. I remember always trying to open the traps without touching the mice.