Late this summer, when Shaheen and I were cleaning the downstairs bedroom, we found two little mice.? Not unexpected since I live in the woods, but hadn’t had any inside in a long time.
We left a left a little table in the room for them to hide behind while we cleaned the rest of it.? Then I rigged up a small wastebasket with some bird feed in it, and a ruler they could climb up to hop in after it.? I expected to find them in there in the morning, and to take them out to the woods.? Instead, I found them in a wastebasket in the garage – with no ladder for them to climb.? I took them near the driveway, suggesting they find a nice nook and settle in somewhere for the winter.
A couple of weeks later, I noticed mouse droppings behind the wastebasket in the kitchen.? They had not taken my advice.? So I went to the neighborhood hardware store and got two little mouse have-a-heart traps.? I put peanut butter in them, so the mice would have to stay in there to get it all.? To no avail.? The peanut butter was gone, and so were the little rodents.
So last week, I went to the hardware store again.? I passed up the glue traps, which seem unbearably cruel.? And got two regular medieval traps.? I was talking to them all this time, telling them they were going to die if they didn’t move.? They paid no attention – last night I heard them, at dinner time, under the sink behind the wastebasket again.
Then I set two traps with some very nice Greek haloumi cheese.? One of them bit the dust, the other got away with the cheese.? I reset the empty trap with a very oozy peanut butter / coconut oil spread I had bought.? And this morning, the second mouse guy had left the planet.
Just in case, I have re-set the traps, while explaining telepathically to the mouse world at large that hanging around my house is not a good idea.