Uninvited Houseguests

I hate to admit this publicly because it makes me feel so dirty and creepy, but Mike is insistent that I blog about the latest adventure in the Lewis house. We seem to have a little- strike that- a large problem with mice in our utility room. It all started with a few droppings a few weeks ago, and now I am convinced that an entire mouse colony is somehow nested on my property helping themselves to catfood and happily pooping in my floor. Mike swears that he heard some squeaking one night while I was sleeping. I seriously doubt that mice actually squeak and that on the off-chance that they do that he actually heard it, but he is convinced.

So, my hunter gatherer husband went to Walmart and bought every kind of mousetrap known to man. We have the classic wood trap baited with peanut butter. We have the glueboards in various shapes and sizes. And we have some new fangled and rather humane looking black plastic mouse box. He could not wait to show me the danger zone that used to be my utility room. I had been home no more than an hour when we found our first victim and that sucker was FAT. He had been living off the fat of the land for a while. Score one for the old fashioned wood trap. The down side of this first catch was that there was truly an alarming amount of blood and despite the fact that I desperately want these mice out of my house it made me really sad to actually see him dead.

Last night, or rather early this morning (4:30 am), I heard Mike up in the utility room. He had caught one on the glueboard and saw another one run for his life out the door. The best part of this story is that one had triggered the wood trap and somehow drug it under the washing machine. So at 4:30 in the morning Mike is in the utility room right next door to where I am trying to sleep and he is throwing the washing machine into the wall while he noisily shoves a stick of some kind under it trying to kill this mouse. Fifteen minutes later he had set it free and hacked me off. I was wide awake wondering why the loud assault I had just experienced could not have waited an hour until my alarm went off.

So, now we are on to night number two of the attack. I am hoping to either get several tonight or at least scare them off with all of the commotion that I am certain Mike will be making at an equally inconvenient time. The only comfort that I have in any of this is that they are only in the utility room and not in the kitchen or Carter's room, but they gross me out and make my skin crawl. Yuck. Mike wanted me to post pictures. I am not sure I need to subject you to that yet, but rest assured that I will keep you updated with our progress.