Managing Your Rodent Infestation: An Ongoing Series

Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, my roommate and I identified that we had a problem, sampled several implements of torture, and asked for help. I think that’s pretty good progress. But despite our three-pronged assault (poison! stick! snap!) , with efforts concentrated largely in the Kitchen Theatre, the yet-to-be-named mouse is still using our basement as a giant mouse playground/poop depository. It grows bolder: Earlier this week, my roommate heard it investigating her closet. I’m afraid it may be time to extend our efforts to the bedrooms.

For now, though, we’ve decided to stay the course in the kitchen: this time, with upgraded snap traps. Yesterday, we replaced these:

With these:

Sure, these traps may look the same to you . . . if you are the dumb mouse we intend to catch with it! Now that the mouse has grown comfortable stealing bait straight from the trap, my roommate and I are hoping it has let its guard down and will succumb to this more sensitive model. In place of the first trap’s plastic swiss cheese bait apparatus, this new trap holds mouse bait on a smaller metallic platform which takes significantly less pressure to set off. We’re still using peanut butter.

Result: Failure. The human side has suffered casualties (non-fatal). My roommate caught her finger in the traps several times while setting them (once, causing her to swear loudly!). Later, when I set one trap off on accident, the snapping noise was really loud and it hurt my ears. Still, despite the traps’ significant effects on humans, they’ve yet to lure our mouse to its death. This morning, we found one trap licked clean of its peanut butter bait. The trap remained unsnapped.

Next time: Will these makeshift rodent dungeons finally spell fin for our basement Speedy Gonzalez? Okay, okay–he still needs a name!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Animal Rights, Hygiene, Sanitation, Urban Exploration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.