The Mouse Invasion

I realized that I never really explained all the mouse references on our blog. After our first apartment together, where we caught 13 mice in a rather short time period, we assumed that it could never get worse than that. And maybe in numbers that's still true. But we've been traumatized for the last 3 or so months with a new mouse problem. We knew that our old house had mice once in a while - last winter we caught one or two. And this winter we trapped 3. But there were many more that gleefully licked the peanut butter and honey off of our traps and eluded death. We tried different traps, and different bait, and finally I suppressed my gag reflex and bought the mouse poison. I had visions of dead mice rotting in our walls, or better yet, Morgan bringing me a dead mouse with a smile. But we couldn't stand it anymore. You may ask yourself how we knew there was a problem if we weren't catching mice. First it was the rice bag with teeth marks in it. So we moved all the food to inaccessible places and set traps. Then it was the squeaky clean mouse traps that were feeding, not killing, the mice. But worst were the sightings and the noise. It got so bad that I was seeing a mouse a day. My piano student saw one. While Erik's family was visiting, we all sat in the living room and watched a mouse run along the wall. Go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and see a mouse run across the bathroom floor while you're trapped on the toilet. Those kind of things. I started getting really jumpy and checking my shoes before inserting feet. Morgan was oblivious, even after a mouse ran by one foot from her. She was more interested in the blow dryer. The part that had me ready to move out, though, was all the squeaking, scurrying, and burrowing they were doing at night in our bedroom. One morning after a sleepless night, I found a new hole between the floor and the wall right next to my side of the bed. I called Darryl and he plugged it up. And then I listened to them for several nights as they tried to gnaw through steel wool. Naively, I hoped they would just be stuck in there and die. Finally I made Erik trade spots with me in bed so that I could stop hyperventilating. Then they moved to that side of the bed and gnawed on a towel all night. They started playing under our bed , and exhausted, we resorted to ear plugs. I was finally too freaked out by the mice to worry about hearing Morgan in the night. We had done everything we could think of - no food, traps, poison - and it didn't seem to be helping. More holes appeared as soon as we plugged the old ones. One night I walked into the bedroom and froze, for there was a mouse peeping out from under our dresser. Motionless. I hopped on the bed and called for Erik. Now, we're both kind of terrified of mice, but Erik is the manly defender of our home, so I make him take care of them. After chucking cough drops at the body for a while, we decided it was dead, so Erik put on hot pads and reached for it with a plastic bag. And then it darted back under the dresser and scared us almost into incontinence. Turns out it was only mostly dead. Now Erik got mad, and started poking under the dresser for it, eventually wearing it out until it flopped into sight. This time, Erik got it and gave it a nice burial outside in the trash can. I hoped that this might be the end of our nocturnal disturbances, but I was disappointed. We bought more poison, bought more earplugs, and waited stoically for spring, when they would likely migrate outside. We never did catch any more mice, but gradually we stopped seeing and hearing them, and we assume that they have moved on. One thing always puzzled me, and that was how they didn't starve to death. I was imagining magical mice that could climb shelves and burrow through wood, until I pulled a box out from under the bed and dislodged a sprinkle of mouse droppings. I'd been avoiding looking under there, for fear of what I would find, but after we saw the excrement we hitched up our courage and moved the bed. Insert vomiting here. We finally found the source of the problem - a rice bag, one of those homemade ones you warm up in the microwave for toasty feet, that I'd totally forgotten about. The mice had feasted on this bag all winter and pretty much finished it off. And they had defecated all over under the bed, apparently not minding mingling food with poo. It was foul. I encouraged Erik from the safety of the bed while he vacuumed and made discoveries, like an old purse they had nested in and ripped apart. It was a Family Home Evening to remember, and at the end Erik solemnly promised me funding someday to pay for regular extermination. These days, we appear mice-free, although we have fond reminders of them, like the gaping holes between wall and floor, and a few lingering mouse traps. I only shake my shoes once in a while, and am mostly undisturbed by our old house's noises at night. I would like to say that we won and beat back the intruders, but I'm pretty sure they moved on because the rice was dwindling and the outside was warming up. There you have it - our epic mouse saga.

To be continued...next winter.