Sunday, February 19, 2012

2012 Mouse Wars

My house was built in 1905, or 1910, depending on whether you believe the neighbors or the paperwork. Either way, it's been here a while. It's got the feel of a house that was built for the grandma of a family that would have lived on the adjacent lot. When I bought it, it was a one bedroom house, and I had the back porch bumped out for Mr W's room. They made bedrooms small back in the day, and I can look on the floor of my bedroom and see that the front part of it used to be part of the front porch.

Anyway, it's a good solid little house and I've been very happy here. I've mentioned before that The Plan was to stay here for a year or two after my divorce, and then meet Mr. Right, move into another house, and live happily ever after. I try to say that without rolling my eyes, but here six years later, I laugh at myself for my presumption that I would know how my life would unfold.

Oh yes, the point of this post. So, about a year ago, I started seeing evidence of mice in my kitchen. Eww. They had quite the party and left quite a mess, but I snap-trapped them and was mouse-free until a couple of weeks ago. IMO, I don't see the point of live trapping mice to make them someone else's problem.

It's funny how there's an initial period of denial. Is that a mouse dropping? No, couldn't be. Well, the evidence is incontrovertible, so I went out yesterday and bought four more traps, for a total of six. I don't want to draw this out any longer than necessary. Last year I had a bag of dog food in the basement (oh, my naiveté), that in retrospect makes me wonder why they even bothered coming upstairs. Maybe they had to get a drink to wash it all down with. Anyway, there's no food stored in the basement, and the dog food is in a plastic tub that as far as I can tell has not been breached.

I set the traps last night and haven't caught anything yet.

2 comments:

  1. You're in Colorado, we're in Minnesota. Are we under a mouse attack? No, (she says as she knocks on wood) we haven't had any mouse activity on the Pea premises but we were just talking with friends Friday night who said the mice have been coming into their house as if it were fall. My point is that the mice aren't supposed to be seeking nice, warm places to spend the winter months . . . not in February, comin' up on March, they aren't. Hmmmm, what's goin' on?

    ReplyDelete

Hi, sorry to make the humans do an extra step.