Revenge of the Meeces

Chapter II of the saga...

Where to start, where to start....

Now as per the original post, Mrs. Dr. Doolittle was happy we were catching meeces in our 'humane' traps and subsequently "freeing" them in fields away from our home. (If nursery rhymes teach us anything, it is that we should be "scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head...") Back to the story...

"Of course", I'm thinking, "We are just perpetuating the problem and giving the meeces a second chance of infiltrating someone else's home..."

So a week or so ago, I had returned home from one of many "underground mouse-railway" trips (think we had freed 6 so far..) to the fields to free the meeces... I put the trap outside on the deck.

Mrs. H didn't like that, "the dogs could get to it", she says and decides she'll put it inside the BBQ grill for now; later, she'll put more peanut butter and set it back up.

An hour or two passes and she now has time to attend to the re-baiting of the trap. She grabs the trap and brings it inside from the deck. She begins to open it and...

(No, no. Not Jamaican Reggae singer Eek-a-Mouse)

...there were live meeces inside the trap.

Oscar-winner for Outstanding female performance, Mrs. H does the stereotypical -- Now try saying this all in one breath... 1, 2, 3... Take a DEEP BREATH...

Freaking Out lady looking for the highest place off the ground, scampers up on the counter top in the kitchen and at the same time throwing the now-opened trap on the ground, thereby "liberating" the meeces inside our own house!"

(Ok, breathe now...)

The doglies didn't even notice the meeces (we think two) running for cover. I eye in on one and try to corner it, but I'm no mouser - too slow. I watch it make it's way underneath Thing 1's computer desk in the family room.

Of course, you realize, this means war!

It's time for barbaric measures. She says, "We will KILL those mice (translation: "You, Mr. H, will take care of this for me...") no matter what!"

I think this means Mrs. H can now officially lose the title Mrs. Dr. Doolittle. "The gloves are off!", she declares.

She then breaks down into worry, anxiety-mode tears at the thought of just having released the meeces inside the house. I poke fun at her, of course, for not checking the trap prior to opening it.... (relegated to the couch for that comment...)

Off to the store to get our weapons of mass destruction. I think we ended up with at least a dozen snap traps, a few sticky pads, as well as the original "humane" traps now set up throughout the lower level of the home.

A new part of my morning ritual is to now check the traps before heading off to work. I was pretty good at it, but alas, I have yet to find treasure...

Were they getting their REVENGE!?!

No, they just decided to be trapped and subsequently disposed of by the one who cringes at the very thought.... Mrs. H.

Living Room mouse, as it was formally named, was killed in a snap-trap behind the TV. Thing 1 really got into the "disposal" process. Donning gloves, she skipped all the way to the big garbage can outside after stuffing trap and prey into a sandwich baggy to get rid of it.

"1 down, 1 to go" I told the tale to my mom over last Sunday's evening phone conversation. "Not so fast, Mr. H.", she replies. There could be more... mice multiply fast, she explained...

"Great!," I reply. How long will this go on? Before Kitty-Dawg's demise, she had pointed, or poked around underneath the stove. Mrs. H heard some noise and decided that is where mouse 2, aka Kitchen Mouse, had set up base-camp.

She set a trap in the oven, and in the drawer below the oven. Next morning, BINGO! We had caught our 2 inside-house mouses...

After deep-cleaning the oven, and scouring the floors with Clorox Clean-up, the Mrs. still senses we may have them varmints in the house. So a thorough cleaning of the pantry and looking around for evidence (mouse turds), she decides we need traps behind the fridge, in the pantry, underneath the kitchen sink and at the back of a few lower kitchen cabinets.

Yesterday morning, Mrs. H discovers another trapped mouse in a lower cabinet, but it wasn't dead. She yells for Thing 1 to come "glove up" and get it... Thing 1 can't reach it, as the mouse had somehow (trap and all) gotten underneath the bottom of the cabinet (inside that free space between the back side of the kick plate of the cabinet and the wall.

Mrs. H calls me to "Find a MAN for the job!" She thinks our neighbor, Jeff, is home, so I call him and he goes over to assess the problem.

End of story: he had to take my Sawzall to the back bottom of the cabinet to get to the mouse and promptly disposed of it.

"Did you see him kill the mouse?" I ask Mrs. H when I arrived home from work.

"EWWW!!!, don't talk about it. I don't want to think about it." She said.
or this?

Mrs. H is hell-bent on eradicating meeces, altogether... Traps will soon go in the basement. Will there be a chapter 3 to this story? ...STAY TUNED!