A-Hunting We Will Go!

Not for deer.. for mice. After living here for 3 years without any sign whatsoever, our recent suspicions of uninvited guests were confirmed.

A few days ago I was up at 2 a.m. using the bathroom and I heard this scritch-scratching in the walls. I knew, from living in our previous residence, what that meant. I groaned but at 2 a.m., I wasn't about to go looking for any little furry rodents.

I told Dale about it, and sure enough, Tuesday morning while he wandered out to get some coffee, out of the corner of his eye his saw it. A mouse. Oh great. It went and ran under the microwave cart. Then it poked its head back out and ran under the bookcase in the entranceway. He stopped on the way home and got traps and some DeCon.

Last night after all the kids were in bed he set a trap under the microwave cart, and one under the bookcase. Around 1 a.m. we heard a "SNAP" and some clattering. Aha! Got one! He was going to leave it until morning, when we heard a few minutes later quite a bit of noise. More clattering and the like. Dale went out to see what was going on with this mouse, and lo and behold, the trap didn't get the mouse around the neck, but around the bottom half of its body, and it was trying to claw its way out. In other words, it wasn't dead.

Dale realized it was trying to get under the stove, so he went downstairs to get a small chunk of wood to put it out of its misery. By the time he got back up the mouse did indeed disappear under the stove. He pulled out the drawer, and saw kind of wedged up in the area where the draw attaches to the stove. Then he realized he needed to take the drawer assembly off to even get to it. He certainly didn't want it there permanently.

I was still in our room listening to all of the action, chuckling a bit. I could recognize the sounds of what he was doing until the very next thing. I heard this low toned, very soft grinding. "what in the world? That sounds like his drill!" I was thinking. I heard some slattering, then some more drilling, then some poking around, then BAM BAM BAM BAM! It was quiet for a minute and I heard some clattering, then the drill again. I almost got out of bed to take a peek but was inwardly cringing at what my imagination was conjuring up. Especially during the BAM BAM BAM BAM part. I was picturing a mouse smack-down.


What happened was he couldn't exactly reach the mouse that was stuck up in the stove, and had to take the drawer stuff apart. after he did that he went back downstairs and got the poker from the woodstove, and poked at the trap. He heard the mouse squeak and rattle in protest, but got it out. He then took the chunk of wood and... well, you get the picture. I assumed after he disposed of whatever was left of the mouse he put the drawer assembly back together (that was the second drilling I heard) and put everything away. The chunk of wood went right into the woodstove. He also put some DeCon out.

This morning he related all this to me adding that when he checked the DeCon, it was pretty much licked clean. Good. Bon Apetit, and make you bring some back for all your little furry friends.

Part of my chores was cleaning out the stove drawer and washing everything that was in it. Yuck!

Tonight we'll set more traps...