Listen my children and you shall hear of the last mousecapades adventure of the year.
Shortly after I bludgeoned the one trespassing creature in May 2022 and unceremoniously throwing his carcass out the door, his comrades rushed to back-fill his position. They were smarter and wilier, however. I never got a look at them, only watched in horror as the green slab of poison staged in my bathroom linen closet moved nightly. The traps were ignored by the angry invaders.
Desperate, I transferred into panic mode, researching the Internet for assistance. Fortunately, plenty of ideas were available.
- Get a cat. You have got to be kidding. I am a dog person. (No offense to my cat friends.) I don’t want the responsibility.
- Use essential oils. Not an option. The article pointed out that putting peppermint oil or clove oil-soaked cotton balls all over the house won’t be enough to eradicate them on their own. And the hot pepper solution? My guess is that it doesn’t work any better than the oils. And we’d be sneezing nonstop with so much cayenne pepper around.
- Set humane traps. You’ve got to be joking. Some city person must have written this. I am not going to collect these creatures and drive them to a place where they won’t bother anyone. Besides, that’s where I live, in the country.
- Pack spaces with steel wool or block with duct tape. OK. This one caught my interest. I proceeded to tear the house apart, looking for spaces where the bastards could have entered. Finally, I pushed the washing machine away from the wall and discovered that the box built to house the water pipes and gray water discharge was not tightly sealed. Between the tape, S.O.S. pads, and expanding insulation spray to fill cracks, I managed to close the gaps.
In one last Hail Mary, I dumped approximately fifteen hunks of poison under the house. (I live in a pier and beam.)
Two days later, the sickening odor of death pervaded the great room. Miserably we attempted to sniff out the location of the stench, but to no avail. I tore out everything in two closets but never found the source of the odor. And I was not about to crawl under the house on my hands and knees. No telling what else is under there.
Then, things were quiet…. Days passed. One morning I filled my water can and began tending my outside plants. Hmm. When I got to the last third of the water, something was blocking the spout. And, when I turned the can over to get rid of the blockage, (yes, you guessed it) a dead baby mouse tumbled out, hitting my hand before landing in the grass. Guess the poison made him thirsty
He got the last laugh after all.
You can find the other episodes of mousecapades here:
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