Ben by Daniel Shelton for March 03, 2021

Be careful – it will bite you if you are not careful.

I love the smell of Victory in the morning!

Believe me, mice can make a lot of noise. We get them from time to time in our dropped ceilings, and it sounds as if they are either staging the chariot race from Ben Hur, or having a bowling tournament.

She is not taking into account the amplification of sounds at night

Peanut butter works better and it doesn’t fall off.

wait, you handed it to her ‘set’ ?and the thing in the attic (sounds like a Lovecraft story) could be a possum or raccoon.

The Early Bird may get the worm, but the Second Mouse gets the cheese.

I repeat….call the exterminator.

This reminds me of an incident way back in the early days of PCs in the workplace. I had a failing 10MB (yes, ten megabytes!) hard drive running in my office with the cover taken off. I wanted to see how long I would be able to access files on it, exposed to the elements, as it was. A lady came in, saw it, said “Ooo!”, and proceeded to move toward it with her pointing finger! I yelled at her to stop, that thing is spinning really, really fast! Anyway, after explaining what it was and what I was doing, I told her that, after my experiment was over, she could have it to display as abstract art, or as a paperweight, or whatever. She liked that idea, and did so. Then later, I started getting requests from others for failed drives for their offices!

When we lived in VT in an old farmhouse, I had to get use to the little buggers running rampant in our bedroom at night. Traps were laid daily and I got use to hearing the snap of them at night maybe with a squeak. But I never did get over having them run over the top of our bed. I remember one night one of them barely got caught in a trap and was squeaking because it didn’t die instantly. My then hubby got up and hit it with a bat or something to finish it off. Farm life is definitely not for the weak of heart.

You’d be surprised how much racket the little buggers can make. Try that and if you only get a little tail, go bigger.

Our cats (and dogs actually) are champion mousers. The newest cat, Sultan, just loves to play with them. Til they either faint or die. Did you know mice can faint? LOL!

When I lived in a rental house, one time a rat chewed a hole in the wall, got into the house, and had babies. Ugh. Landlord came and patched the hole but didn’t do anything to catch them. I bought about 40 of the sticky traps and eventually caught them all. I hadn’t thought it through and didn’t realize ahead of time that the stuck rats would still be alive. Finally I put them in the big garbage bin and drowned them with the hose.

A trap made from a pail of water and a lure that allows the mice to fall in and drown might be the most efficient mousetrap. Search for “water pail mouse trap” for ideas on how to set it up.

Maybe their house is settling – or unsettling . . .

Around here – glue traps are used.