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.