Managing Your Rodent Infestation: Not A Creature Was Stirring Edition

Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, we planted new snap traps, baited, once again, with delicious peanut butter. A while back, we switched to smooth butter after our mouse simply ate the chunks out of the chunky, leaving only the butter behind. Picky, picky!

Since setting our new traps, my roommate and I haven’t heard a squeak out of our as-yet-unnamed mouse. The traps are set, the peanut butter is creamy, but the mouse isn’t licking. What, wee rodent? Lost your appetite, have you? Or perhaps, sensing your impending doom at the hands of our advanced weaponry, you have retreated from our basement in order to seek your scrumptious protein-rich handouts elsewhere?

The mouse isn’t talking. But the public is! As it turns out, everybody’s a mouse extermination critic!

Many of you offered up helpful suggestions, ranging from super-glued rice kernals to feline pals to spur-of-the-moment wok-drownings. Some of you chose to insult our intelligence in the process. One commenter suggested that we had mistakenly purchased sticky traps made for insects instead of rodents (lies!), while another asserted that we had set the traps incorrectly (it’s really hard!). A budding conspiracy theorist insisted that we had not one mouse, but multiple mice. And a concerned citizen went so far as to question whether or not we were committing a felony. Will it be the charges of premeditated mouse disposal that ultimately do us in?

One low-tech extermination method stood out from the rat pack: A trap made from a toilet paper tube, a peanut butter cracker, and a bucket.

Tonight, the toilet paper roll trap will be set. If all goes according to plan, our unsuspecting mouse will pass from the Tunnel of Scrumptious Delight … and into the Bucket Too Tall For It To Escape From!

Next time: A mouse gets a name … am I beginning to form an attachment to the critter? Also: If this guy has the ability to scurry up onto our high kitchen counters, how is a fucking bucket supposed to reign it in?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Animal Rights, Home Improvement, Hygiene, Sanitation, Urban Exploration, Wild Kingdom. 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.