Mousecapades

Two different sizes of poop = two different kinds of mice

 If you've been following my Facebook, you know that we've lately been dealing with mouse problems.

 Upon return from my trip to NY, I found poop in every room and closet in my house except for the master suite. The worst were under the boys' beds where they had left nuts/raisins and also in the linen closet. In complete disgust I went on about an 9 hour cleaning frenzy and cleaned the house from top to bottom including the garage.

 The lovely grey house mice have been coming into my house via the cut out around our gas line behind the stove in the kitchen. I have so far been greeted three times by these mice in our pantry/playroom. Each time they escaped me when I tried to trap them. Of course they surprised me and I am shaking from adrenaline while I'm trying to catch them. I first baited the traps with honey, but ran out and got peanut butter after discovering that the mice were just ignoring my traps.

Black locked poison trap. Where the foam board thing is is where the hole used to be.

Sticky pads. There's also another in the garage.

 TO MY UTTER HORROR: I heard scratching coming from my wall in the laundry room while taking the dogs out around sunset and looked to discover huge chunks of plaster knocked down around the dryer vent. I quickly stuffed steel wool in there after banging on the wall and the scratching noise ceased. Well, I was lying in bed unable to sleep and decided to just go listen one more time to make sure the mouse was gone. As I walked by the dryer I saw something scurrying out of my peripheral vision!!! I looked and the thing had just chewed around the steel wool at the bottom. I stuffed two pairs of pants in the doors to block escape routes and grabbed a box to trap the mouse. Eventually a gigantic BROWN deer mouse ran out from under the dryer and scurried all over the laundry room. The box I had grabbed had holes in it that I didn't realize were there, so I guess it's ok that I was too freaked to trap the thing.. It hid under the dryer again so I decided to just go to bed and stuff more things under the door to keep it out of the main house. In there morning there was no more poop, but there was steel wool pulled out indicating he had beat feet soon after I left.

The next morning I went to Loew's and bought some animal repellant which I sprayed liberally around the vent. AND it stunk like rotten fish and garlic, but so far no more scratching or steel wool pushed out.

Finally, on Thursday, a week after initially calling to report a problem, pest control showed up to lay down two poison traps, sticky pads, and stuff steel wool down the gas pipe. I think he almost laughed when he saw my setup around the dryer vent, because he said that wasn't going to cut it. I'm currently waiting for maintenance to come and seal this as it was too big for pest control to do. Also, I'm not suspicious that there have been mice coming and going for awhile since I've always seen a little plaster here and there knocked out and chalked it up to the dryer moving. Never huge chunks of plaster though, so I'm thinking that this is our first year being visited by a deer mouse.

Die mouse, die!

Lukas making mustard-glazed chicken thighs

I have been a little too distracted by this mouse thing, so I don't think we're going to do Halloween this year in the trick-or-treating sense. Plus, there's supposed to be a Frankenstorm or something so I guess it's good we're staying in.

Other than that, no news! Justin's off to Georgia for another TDY and he told me that drill team already has their dates picked out for the next "camp" which is the 30 days of bonding they all do at a base far away every year around March. He went last year and that was not a good time for me. I'm hoping all these little trips away have broken me in for this next one. Plus, he was gone almost all of September and I survived that..

Until next time!