Some recent facebook postings by a friend and fellow blogger, Non-stop mom, has brought back some memories. She has been having some issues with mice lately and her troubles trapping some of these little critters reminded me of a little story.
Several years ago, my son and I moved in with a friend of mine, Elvin. We have known each other for 40+ years. We grew up together and there are several stories that I will be sharing about our escapades.
When we decided to move in together, I was going through my divorce and he was going through a breakup from a long term relationship. My lease was coming up and he had just bought a home on several acres of land outside of Mulvane Ks. In order for both of us to save money we became roomies. It was a 3 bedroom home so there was enough room for all of us.
We didn't really have many neighbors. It was a new developement of 5 acre tracks and he was the 2nd of 3 families that moved out there. We had neighbors across the street but the only other neighbor was a couple of hundred yards away.
The neighbor across the street though had several cats. One of which was a big old fluff ball who thought that going through our trash cans and sleeping on Elvin's porsche was his God given right. Elvin would come outside and find this cat perched on his car and the war was on. He made the mistake of leaving the sunroof open one night and when he came out the next morning he opened up the door and that cat shot out the door like a jack-in-the-box. I don't know if the little package he left inside was from being scared or what but either way Elvin was out for blood.
So anyway we started noticing an issue with mice. It seemed like the problem went from nothing to a lot of something within a couple of weeks. We noticed a dropping here and there and the next thing we know we see them running along the baseboard. We even had a couple of brave ones come out and watch T.V. with us. We were sitting there one night and one come out, sat down in the middle of floor and started watching T.V. It was actually pretty cute, then another one came out. That wasn't so cute. When they demanded that we change the channel we decided it was time to get some traps.
I got several snap traps and the hunt began. It didn't take long to figure out where they ran and the routes that they took around the furniture, so it only took a couple of days for me to catch almost all of the mice. Most of them were pretty easy to catch but there was one that avoided all of the traps and figured out ways around them. I would move the traps around and no matter where I put them he would avoid or figure out how to get the bait off the traps. I watched this mouse jump over certain traps and work his way around others to get back and forth. Micky was really starting to piss me off.
So back to the drawing board.
I went back to the store to see what other options I had. I didn't want poison. Chance was only about 3 years old and I didn't want him getting into it. The snap traps were going no where. Among the other selections were sticky traps. I don't how long sticky traps had been out but I had never seen them before. I had never really had a problem with mice before so this was a new thing for me. At first they looked pretty cool. The mouse runs onto the sticky pad, gets stuck and you throw it away. Sounds easy enough.
I bought the sticky traps and got to work. I set up an elaborate setup of sticky traps and snap traps around the furniture, behind the couch, etc. I set up traps on opposite side of table legs so that when he jumped over the leg he would land on the trap. I was all set.
The next day we were watching T.V. when we heard a squeaking noise. I went and looked behind the table and lo and behold, there sat my mouse. Right in the middle of the sticky trap. So I picked him up, did my little happy dance and took him out to the trash.
About 30 minutes later we heard a hell of a commotion out front. Something knocked over the trash can and was banging into the house. We ran outside to see what was going on and there was the cat next door running blindly around the yard, banging into the house, the cars, jumping around doing flips in the air, rolling around the yard, growling as loud as it could, with the sticky trap stuck to it's face. Evidently it heard the mouse squeaking, came to investigate and found dinner served on a platter. Unfortunately for him the plattter was a sticky trap. When he tried to eat the mouse he got the trap stuck to his face. As I said earlier he was a huge fluff ball so this thing was stuck. It covered his entire face. He was running around blind trying to get the trap off. It was funnier than hell. We didn't even try to catch it but the neighbor was out so we called him over and when he saw what had happened he just busted up laughing. He was finally able to catch it when the cat laid on it's back and tried to pry the trap off it's face with his back feet and got them stuck too. He got the cat but he walked away bloody and beat up because that cat was nothing but fur and claws. He was one pissed off cat.
The next day I came home and noticed the cat sitting by the road. Shaved. From head to toe. We never had any more problems of it sleeping on any cars or going through trash cans. As a matter of fact, I don't think it ever came across the street again.
No comments:
Post a Comment