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!

Meeces, I hate meeces!

Remember Mr. Jinks?

With the new puppy this past year, we (No... Nope. Not this time... I am not taking the credit or blame on this story...) It is all Mrs. Hogwallop.

I digress... It was decided that the dogs would eat outside rather than the laundry room. Not enough room for both dogs to move around and eat without bothering each other, so we purchased a big garbage pail with a lid with plastic clamps to keep the dog food out on the back deck. Needless to say Thing 2 discovered quite quickly how to remove the lid and dump dog food all over the deck. He did this many times in our Summer of 2008. This meant little dog food pellets made their way into the cracks of the deck and eventually underneath the deck...

And it has become the new buffet of choice for unwelcomed guests. Even Mrs. Dr. Doolittle is not happy.

Meeces!
Not the cute kind like Pixie & Dixie.

Or, even more fondly remembered, Jerry and his little cousin, Nibbles. Maybe it's my fondness for things French, but I do remember the funny episode, "The Two Mousekateers" - Nibbles and his little baby accent, "Ah, pauvre pussycat! C'est la guerre."

(if you don't remember or never saw it. Tom and Jerry and Nibbles are french muskateers dualing with swords and at the end of the cartoon, Tom (at least it is aluded to, that he is beheaded by the guillotine for not keeping the place mouse-free; to which Nibbles says "poor pussycat, That's war!")If you have the Boomerang channel, you'll see it if you record it a few times.

So today, we...(Hang-on!), IT was decided the Hogwallops needed to deal with the meeces as Mrs. H was seeing them outside rather frequently and (although I'm going out on a limb with this blanket statement) freaked all girly-style with the heeby-jeebies, cooties and whatever else makes your skin curl and crawl... and said we MUST get rid of them!

Ah, BUT wait! We cannot kill them. Oh NO! That would be too cruel! Besides, traps means trouble for the dogs, Thing 2, the Mrs. puts her foot down.

"C'mon, it only takes one snap in the snot-locker and the doglies would leave the traps alone.", I protest.

"No, and no poison either!" So we're on a scavenger hunt for 'humane' mouse-traps.

And we find, The Tomcat live catch mouse trap. Nifty little thing, but it only catches one mouse at a time. Which means we have to dispose of (we only purchased two) of the meeces two at a time. So we take a drive out to a field upon catching our first pair.

Mrs. Hogwallop is freaking out the whole time in the car and pushing me as far to the other side as possible and whincing and getting girly-squeamish and I hold the traps in my hands motioning (you know, boy torture) that I'll drop them in her lap...

We stop next to the field, and I pop the lid open then holding the base, snap my wrist so it flings and ejects Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 into the field - they'll probably die by morning (a nice head fracture or whatever... I don't care what happens to them. I wanted to kill them in the first place, remember?)

So two weren't enough and we head out again to the Home depot to find traps that will hold 5-6 at a time. So we've set them up and we could have a nice harvest tomorrow morning...

Danger Mouse will be coming to seek his revenge.... on us! It's just a matter of time...