I have an update
on the mouse-in-the-house situation.
If you'll
recall, I mentioned that we had a slight rodent problem. Such is the case for
anyone living in an older home that lacks complete structural
integrity.
I grew up in the
country, in a farm house that was very old, and that had a foundation with a few
gaps here and there. We would have mice from time to time.
I get teased for
my insistence on always looking for the bright side of any situation. In case
you were wondering, there really is a bright side to having a few mice in
the house. As long as you have those mice, you know you don't have rats.
Apparently—and this is one of the nuggets of wisdom my mother passed on to
me—the two types of rodents won't live together. Now I'm not sure if that's
scientifically proven, but it's true in my own experience.
That old house
in the country did have rats occasionally, most notably when the chicken farm
down the road botched their planned fumigation against their rat infestation and
sent a veritable herd of them charging down the road in our direction. This
happened twice, by the way, about 6 years apart.
But I
digress.
You may recall
that I'd told you we had purchased those plastic "humane" traps. They were
designed to lure the mice in using this nugget of a tablet supposedly
irresistible to the little buggers. Once they munched on said tablet, they would
doze off to the land of mouse dreams, and you could then carry the box outside,
and slip the tiny sleeping beauties out onto the grass.
The traps didn't
work because the mice refused to be lured.
Mr Ashbury set
these traps aside, in much the same way he set the problem aside. And the mice
did what mice do. They thrived and multiplied.
I reminded Mr
Ashbury this past Friday that he really had to take care of the rodent
problem. So he went out (again) and bought more of the old fashioned, wooden
snap traps. In the mean time, I had made a rather interesting
discovery.
The mice,
apparently, had a secret something they were stealing and eating: kitty treats.
You know the ones I mean, the ones that have the television commercials showing
cats jumping through walls, or leaping several stories in the air just to get
one of them.
Our cat, Spooky,
is addicted to these treats. The fact that the mice seem to like these tiny
treats as well kind of make sense, if you follow and then expand that rule of
logic that says that you can eat whatever will eat you.
I decided to
test the viability of using a kitty treat as bait by placing one inside the
plastic, one-way door humane trap.
Half an hour
later I heard the sound of plastic rattling. Sure enough, when I checked, there
was a small rodent looking confused as he tried but was, of course, unable, to
get out of the box.
I'm not very
girly, I'm afraid. I had no problem picking up the box, taking it outside, and
turning it upside down on the grass hill several feet out the back door. The
mouse showed his appreciation for this move by scampering out of the now open
box, and running like hell away from the house.
Mr. Ashbury's
new old-fashioned trap did have one victim, but in light of the excellent new
bait—and because we just want the mice gone, not necessarily dead—he put the
killer-traps away, and has, instead, been loading the humane ones with kitty
treats.
Apparently this
is one temptation (pardon the pun) the little critters can't resist.
Love,
Morgan
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