I grew up in the Wild West. More often than not, we had bugs in our house. I remember a few times a bird flew in through an open door or window and once we even had a snake. (Incidentally, snakes can climb stairs.) Occasionally we had…gulp…mice. I could handle everything except the mice. I have an unreasonable fear of mice.
This background with wildlife invading my home has mostly served me well. I am the bug slayer around here. I am not in the least bit afraid of bugs. Adam is. He’s like the elephant in cartoons that gets skittish around mice. He’s big and strong but little things that crawl around scare him. I don’t mind. When we lived in a 100-year-old house about 5 years ago, the house was sort of porous I guess because we had a lot of spiders and creepy crawling things. Many mornings I would wake up to find a big heavy book in the middle of the living room floor. Underneath would be a squished spider for me to get rid of. Adam’s modus operandi: fling books at the offending arachnids.
Luckily, luckily, we’ve never had a mouse. I know for a fact we wouldn’t handle it well. When Braeden was a toddler he got a Little People Fisher Price town set for Christmas. We were sitting on the floor admiring it and Adam said, “There’s a mouse in the corner.” I dove instinctively for the couch and Adam stared at me then said, “Here, in the corner of the veterinary clinic, in the Little People town.”
Oh.
Yesterday the unthinkable happened. I went to the garage, innocently, unsuspecting, to get my gluten flour for making bread. It was in a mylar bag. There were nibble marks in every corner and other…evidence…of mice. To say that I freaked out is an understatement. I scooped up all my lovely gluten flour in a garbage bag and my eyes darted around for any other mice or indication of their presence. I didn’t see any. Then I remembered that on Saturday night, Adam who is the irrigator extraordinaire around here had been watering the grass late and had left the garage open all night. It was a little bit comforting that I had Adam to blame.
When Adam got home, he was appropriately apologetic and comforting to me and promised me that we’d go to Lowe’s and get a mouse deterrent.
So last night found us at Lowe’s, contemplating the display of rodent extermination. It was hard for me to even look. There were lives traps, which I can hardly imagine. How horrible to have a mouse, trapped, staring up at you with bared fangs (it could happen). Then there were conventional traps (no thank you) and covered traps where the mouse is in there but you don’t see it. Still. It’s in there and you have to dispose of it somehow. Worse of all were the glue traps. We’re back to the bared fangs but now, the mouse is stuck to glue. I have absolutely no sympathy or affection for mice by any stretch of the imagination but even I can see how inhumane and terrible that is.
We decided the siren that scares mice away was our best option. (We had one of those in the basement of our old house with lots of spiders…we never saw a mouse.) The biggest perk to the siren is that there are no dead bodies to deal with. There was a package of three small sirens and another package of one big, heavy duty, industrial strength siren. That’s the one we got. We aren’t messing around.
Adam set it up in the garage last night. This morning when we were leaving bright and early for swim team practice, I told Braeden to go outside and open the garage from outside instead of from the door in the house. I had visions of little mice, driven to distraction from the siren all night, standing on their wee haunches right next to the door, ready to bolt inside as soon as the door was open. When I explained all of this (admittedly irrational) rationale to Braeden he looked at me like I was a crazy person but I think he did hesitate a little before he opened the garage. He didn’t want to be attacked by psychotic mice either.
So we’re in phase one of the process to rid ourselves of mice. Hopefully this will work. If we still have mice, we’ll have to do one of the following:
1- Move
2- Go back to Lowe’s for a barbaric trap then have my dad, one of my brothers (are you guys busy?) or maybe a home teacher (?) come and remove the mouse from the trap
3- Abandon the garage altogether…let the food storage, garden tools, camping gear and bikes fend for themselves.
For now, we’re sticking with the siren. Wish us luck.
2 comments:
I SO feel your pain. I hate mice too. When Isaiah was a baby, I sat on the top of the back of my couch with him after spotting a mouse. I called the exterminator before Enoch got home. He gave us great glue boards - better than the ones you get at Lowes. He also suggested licorice for bait if we used traps. I don't relish finding live mice stuck to things either... but luckily I'm married to one of your brothers who doesn't mind. Good luck.
Actually the glue boards are pretty cool. Especially if you stalk them or have one trapped and they don't have another way out. One evening in Riverton we heard a mouse in the kitchen. I had him trapped behind the fridge so I strategically placed several glue boards around his exit options and we waited for him. IT was a truimphant sound as he came screaching out and then stopped...Gotcha little fella... The cool thing with the glue boards is you can fold them up sort of like a burrito and they stick really well. The glue and the mice are pretty nasty up close, but there's no getting away. I put our little fella in a plastic bag and shook him up really well and told him he'd picked the wrong house. After that got old I put the back in the garbage and it was all over. Jen thinks I have anger management issues, but I think I manage them quite well. I also have a good method for catching mice that are stuck in your wall. I should probably start my own extermination blog...it's not for the week of heart!
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