Mouse in My House

Last Tuesday, I was quietly working from home under a metric ton of pressure, when I discovered we had an unwelcome new resident. In my peripheral vision, I saw a flash of black, and then it was gone. Another flash, and it was gone again. I leaned forward, staring at the edge of the stairs where the flash had come from. THERE IT WAS AGAIN - and it stopped in front of the riser... in the form of a rodent. There was a mouse in my house.

Our neighbors just discovered they had mice, so there was precedent; we're reasonably sure they're coming from the vacant house two down. And, having spent a fair part of my after-school hours working in food service, I can recognize a mouse when I see it. But since we saw neither hide nor hair of the vermin for the rest of the week, I was sincerely beginning to think I had hallucinated. I was wearing my glasses at the time, which leave peripheral vision almost entirely uncorrected, so it wasn't a far leap to think that maybe I'd only imagined it.

On Saturday morning, however, we found incontestible proof of its presence: mouse poop on the stack of cutting boards, which precipitated a frenzy of cutting board and counter washing and disinfecting. The boards are now stored vertically in the drip rack, thereby taking up most of the useable drip rack space, but at least I won't find those little presents on my food preparation materials again. We'll be going through the house this week to seal up all possible openings in the drywall, which is how we think they got in.

I remember several years ago when DC101 DJ Elliot talked about discovering his house had mice. He said his house felt dirty and that he was obsessed with getting rid of them. I remember thinking that he was a wuss, that it was just mice for goodness sake. But now, I know. Now my house feels dirty. Now I'm obsessed with getting rid of them. It's not just their nasty little mouse poops, but they could bring in fleas, and they multiply quickly, and I do not need an infestation nor can I afford the Orkin man.

When Pocket was very small, she singlehandedly rid our basement of the camel cricket menace, for which I am forever grateful. She has never since been so thorough, perhaps because she thinks she's done her part and that our job going forward is to lavish praise and attention upon her for it. So we have no hope of Pocket actually earning her keep by cleansing the house of the rodents as well. But she was behaving distinctly like a cat again last night, staring fixedly at the space under the stove and occasionally chancing a paw under it to see if she could draw out the strange new toy.

We set a couple of full containment mouse traps under the sink where they have clearly been, and next to the stove. Snap traps would most likely catch my toes, or Pocket's tongue if she went for the peanut butter, plus I'd have to make Husband deal with the corpse on the offchance the trap caught its intended target; and glue boards are inhumane as far as I'm concerned (see above re: food service). Full containment traps are ridiculously sensitive to vibration and are therefore a disaster to set (I think I've got the hang of it now), but they promise an instant kill, no body to handle, and no danger to people or pets. So far also, no luck.