I have mice. Yep, mice in my house. Mice in my house. We've been in the house for 5 years, and this is the first time it's happened. It's also the first fall/winter that we've been without a cat, as we lost Elvis last February. A coincidence? I think not.Anyway, I was cleaning the kitchen, moving aside some of the appliances that sit on the counter, when I found them. Mouse turds. Crap! (In all senses of the word.) Then I made a really bad mistake: I told the girls the truth when they heard me exclaim in the kitchen:
Me: Oh no!
Rae: What's wrong, Mom?
Me: I just found mouse poop. We have mice.
Leah: Cool! I like mice.
Rae: Can I see the poop?
See, thanks to Walt Disney and the horribly cute vermin in his movies, the girls are moved to hysterics at the thought of baiting a few traps with rice krispies and peanut butter to get rid of the little critters. According to Disney (and now my brainwashed daughters), mice are cute! And sweet! And adorable!
I guess if the mice at my place were like Jacques and Gus, and helped around the house and made me couture dresses, I could cut them a little slack, but they're not, and seriously, don't you think that Cinderella occasionally found a pile of mouse poop under her toaster oven and wondered what the hell she was doing encouraging the mice to live in the palace?
So the upshot of the situation is that either I shell out for a live trap and then release the mice far far away from our house (where hopefully they will be a good source of protein for hawks), or bait the more conventional traps and leave them out when the girls are in bed, making sure to dispose of the evidence before they get up.
Too bad Walt isn't still around. Either way, I'd ask him to empty the traps. I figure he kinda owes me.
I'm for using the killer traps and then spinning a magical tale for the girls about where the mice went. You're creative...you can do it... good luck.
ReplyDeletePut out poison...they'll go elsewhere to die and no one will ever see them.
ReplyDeleteewwwww, could you take a dead body out of a trap?
ReplyDeletemay parents did the poison thing like alissa said - no one ever saw them leave....
We do the poison thing. We get mice every year thanks to living next to a grain elevator. And like your girls my kids don't think we should kill them. They even name them. They named our mice David and Sydney. Luckily the poison seems to be working because I haven't seen either in quite awhile.
ReplyDeleteTell your girls the truth about mice- how quickly they multiply and take over the house; how they carry a whole host of diseases and vermin; how their poop contains spores that can cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Tell them how the mice are going to chew through all your food and poop in it and chew through your electrical wires which will cause a fire and burn down their house while they're sleeping in their beds; or how the mice will build nests under their beds and in their closets and gnaw on all their favorite clothes and fill their room with mouse poop stink that they'll never get out and have to go to school smelling like poop and will lose all their friends. Tell them that and watch them help you bait the traps.
ReplyDeleteEwww, Mice. I sympathize.
ReplyDeleteI have to say though, your blame of Walt Disney may be misplaced - I loved Cinderella and all those Disney-related Mice movies, but never thought the real thing was cute or cuddly. Just icky. ;)
Good luck!
I just got shivers down my back. Hate mice. We had them last winter because of a lot of construction in the area.
ReplyDeleteI went with the humane traps, but that's because I could not handle the disposal of the others.
Good luck
Yeah, wouldn't want them in MY house either, but then again, I'd take them over snakes anyday!
ReplyDeleteYuck.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Alissa...
I lived in your village for 18 years. Every year that the weather became very cold very early the mice moved in - in droves! We always kept TWO cats.
ReplyDeletegrace
Yuck mice! I'd go with the poison or another cat...
ReplyDelete