Rats!

Well, actually mice.  Field mice to be precise.  This house is in the country so there are any number of critters trying to see if there is better stuff inside the house.  We mostly find insects inside, but this summer we started to see signs of mice.  I have often heard things in the attic but that had not spurred me into action.  This summer I started seeing a few droppings around the house and then I found a dead mouse who had gotten trapped in my tub and presumably died of dehydration/starvation.  I thought, we maybe that took care of things.  Ha!  I was sitting in the living room one evening and I saw a flash of fuzz run up the rock wall next to the fireplace.  Of course the dogs didn't even notice, not even the rat terrier!  That night I swear I heard some scratching in the bedroom that was inside the room, not inside the wall.  Well, that did it.  I went and got some mouse traps at Lowes.  There are a number of different kinds and I bought two:  one that catches the mouse inside and you throw away the whole unit, and one that is spring action and looks like it has teeth.  I placed 6 traps around, including the attic and went back to our main house.  After a few days I returned and found this guy in the garage:

After catching several more that way I decided to get more traps.  I never caught anything in the spin/capture traps so I just bought more of the ones with teeth.  They work great and only take a little dab of peanut butter as bait.  

Soon after catching some inside I figured out what had attracted them.  My kids had been playing poker one night and didn't have poker chips so they used popcorn kernels.  They left a big stack on the table and we didn't think about it again.  One afternoon in the middle of all the trapping, I went to move a ladder that had been leaning against a wall for quite some time.  All of the sudden I was showered with popcorn kernels!  The mice had moved every popcorn kernel to their hiding spot on the ladder!

After removing every type of food or water (besides the toilet which I think is inaccessible to them), I have not seen any more signs of mice inside the house.  Periodically I catch a new one in the garage or attic but I feel like that is to be expected.  I have noticed that the traps seem to have a limited life as they wear out their trigger mechanism after several catches.  So my plan is just to always have a few traps baited in the garage and attic and, if I start catching a lot, maybe add a few in the house.

I try not to feel bad because the mice are very cute and look A LOT like the pet mouse we once had.  But they just can't live in my house....