The Hunt Is On!

Last week I moved the vacuum sealer on the kitchen counter and I found some tiny brown bits of something hiding behind it. My immediate thought was that some kind of bug or critter that had gotten into the house. Not having much experience with this though, I assumed it was a bug issue because the droppings were so small.

Now, I will be the first to admit that my house is not spotlessly clean. And, in re

cent weeks the dishes had piled up a bit because we've been busy. However, we've never had a bug or critter issue in over 15 years of housekeeping. Even when we lived in Hawaii, a breeding ground for all kinds of insects and furry critters, we never had a problem. The only thing that ever ran around our house were the gecko lizards in Hawaii.

The first thing I did was to get all the dishes washed and the counters cleaned over the next couple of days. We even pulled out the oven and fridge and scrubbed the entire floor. Finally we cleaned out some of the cabinets and reorganized them. Despite all this, we didn't find any sign of bugs or critters. Then, we began to think that it was probably a mouse living somewhere in the house because we didn't find any signs of bugs. We also determined that he's probably a pretty recent guest as we haven't noticed anything before this.

Once, a few years ago, we did have a mouse get into a ba

g of powered sugar in the garage. We wrote it off as an anomaly because the weather was particularly cold that week and it never happened again. Also, it's really easy for something to get into the garage when the door can be up for hours sometimes.

For the next few days we made sure that the counter was especially clean of any food items and checked every morning for fresh droppings. We also set up a trap at the scene of the crime, on the kitchen counter. It was a canister thing that's supposed to trap the mouse inside and poison it. After a couple of days things were quiet. The trap was empty and the counters remained clean. Then, one night we were careless and left a bit of something on the counter and there were droppings the next morning.

One odd thing through all this was that we have two cats and neither of them has shown any sign of noticing a mouse. Our best explanation for this was a) they're not too bright, and b) we lock them in the computer room at night when the mouse is mostly likely active. Well, last night this changed. I was looking for Skittles so I could put him to bed, but I couldn't find him in any of his usual hiding spots. When I did find him, he was in the kitchen in front of the oven. He was hunched down in like he does when he's about to jump his brother.

This curious behavior immediately got my attention. I quickly came to the conclusion that he had the mouse cornered under the oven. Good kitty! So, I moved the rug kitchen rug and pulled out the stove a foot or two. Contact! There behind the oven, running around in the area between the cabinets on either side and the wall behind the oven was a cute little field mouse. He was light brown and maybe two inches long with beady little eyes.

Then, like a flash, it shot out from under the oven, past the cat and was over the edge to the family room below.

We all ran downstairs to look for it but couldn't find it. Our best guess is that he slipped under the door to the crawlspace under the kitchen. I let Skittles into the crawlspace to see if he could track down the mouse but after fifteen minutes it was clear this wasn't going to happen. We put him in the computer room with his brother and went upstairs to formulate a plan.

Tonight we are going to make a trip to Home Depot to evaluate the mouse trap options. I'm leaning towards a simpler, trap rather than the no-see, no-touch trap we were using. Whichever trap we choose I will be putting it just inside the crawlspace door and I will be blocking the door so the mouse can't get out of there.

If all goes well I expect to have a mouse in a night or two. Because, while he's is cute, he doesn't belong in my house.