Oh, this mouse will vex me forever. Or at least so long as I live in this house.
I've started the process of an overhaul of my room, and I knew to prepare for the worst. Even with this initial step, I'm already discovering the little surprises the mouse left me.
I found yet another cough drop along with a completely empty plastic candy wrapper. The candy is nowhere to be found, and I have no idea what candy that would have been. But the most surprising thing was when I was taking the sheets off my futon to get washed, a strange object was on the mattress.
A half-eaten jelly bean.
At first, I was in a bit of denial, and then I picked it up and inspected it. Yes, it was a nibbled blue sour Jelly Belly jelly bean. More upsetting than anything, I'm pretty sure that packet of jelly beans was actually IN MY PURSE, and to think if that thing actually got in there to take out the packet to nibble on is really upsetting. I would like to half-hope it was a packet I left in my Caboodle (non-sequitur: Firefox English spell check has Caboodle as a word, but not okay and sequitur) for a moment. Either way, I'm not happy it found it.
With a bit more fixing, I found the emptied, partly shredded bag the jelly beans was in along with the bag confetti made from the nibbles.
But the last straw was when I found the batteries.
I thought I had a few extra batteries floating around, and I was happy and sad to have found them. When I found the first one, I was disappointed to see that it corroded, but when I picked it up, I discovered it actually wasn't. IT WAS NIBBLED. Yes, around the seams of the covering of the battery was nipped at, and even though there wasn't much nibbled around, the nibbles created an interesting fray around th base and along the seam of the thing.
And then I found another.
I do not see or smell anything that would make a battery appetizing at all. Maybe its a mouse thing.
In my frustration, the evil thought crossed my mind that it's too bad it didn't nibble enough to get to the creamy center, but that's just mean. Very, very mean. Not to mention, the thought of cleaning up the carcass of a dead mouse that died due to battery acid as well as the leaked battery.
I look forward and dread once I get down and dirty with this cleanup and discover the rest of its little presents it left me.
Before I forget this topic altogether, I will try to write this entry before passing out from the lack of food all day and the fact I should get up and actually visit friends, but I should have known better than to think I was done dealing with the mouse when it left the house, but nooooooooooooooooooo...
Right after I posted my "Quickie" entry running late and naked, I made an effort to wear clothes that weren't on the top of the pile for once and show I have a pretty large wardrobe despite the fact I never wear most of it. While I was rummaging/fixing, I happened upon this bag of Halls lozenges that have been next to my laundry hamper. I noticed it had a sizeable mouse-nibbled hole in it, and all of the lozenges were gone. I thought to myself, "Damn. What a dum-dum. It wouldn't want to eat those things, even if they contained honey!"
And I was right. I was soooo right.
As I dug deeper into the hamper, I heard this funny crinkle sound from the back of the hamper. Curious to learn what it was, I peered in the back to see the piece of plastic that was making the sound, as well as about two dozen Halls cough drops sans wrapper strewn in the little corridor between the base of the hamper and the wall. The little booger nibbled off all the wrappers and left the lozenges there! I was slightly miffed, thinking that I was out that bag that had a lot more drops than I thought, and that even though I was running late, I needed to clean the mess of lozenges and wrapper crumbs back there.
It makes me wonder what little other surprises I will find in the future...It will be interesting to know what my Easter mouse has left for my Easter eggs...
I finally come home tonight after spending most of the weekend in SGV on my parents' couch (literally, as that's where I slept last night and spent most of my time sitting and dozing off to basketball games) to see that my roommate has returned but is once again disappeared (her stuff was gone Friday night and wasn't here when I left early Saturday), so I trudge in with all my stuff, and when I come into my room, I notice the visible door to the mousetrap was down.
Knowing my track record with the little thing, I didn't think it was caught quite yet, but I was excited in the anticipation. I removed the covering I put over the trap as best as I could to find THE MOUSE caught in the cage!!! HOORAY!
The thing really is a baby. It's a dark brown/charcoal kind of color, and it's teeny. From nose tip to butt, I can probably say it's 2.5-3 inches long.
As happy as I am that I've finaly caught it, I do feel badly for it, for I don't know how long the thing has been in there, especially during this really hot weekend. Granted, I gave it plenty of peanut butter in the trap to lure it, but if it was caught sometime yesterday, it's basically been caught in the thing for too long of a time, and surely the little thing is scared out of its wits right now. Given it was already pretty late, I didn't want to take it down to our nearest park tonight, because I'm a little timid and afraid to drive down to my local park at night in the not-so-safest neighborhood in which I live. So I slipped it a bit more peanut butter in one of the little cracks on the top of the trap, and took a wad of a napkin, soaked it, and stuck it halfway into the trap as well so it could try to lick some water from it to keep itself okay through the night. As I type this, I can hear it rustling around, trying to make its escape. Unlike the mug trap, I'm pretty happy that the mouse is relatively okay in its temporary home right now; had it been caught in the mug, it may not have had enough air for it to breathe, and in this heat, would have easily suffocated.
Of course, as my luck goes, I don't have the easiest of schedules tomorrow. I have to be at the Getty Center at 9 tomorrow, and that means there will be an inevitable amount of traffic to face to get there at that hour. As I was preparing my clothes for tomorrow (as I do have to look decent and presentable), I kept thinking about where/how I would let this little mousey go. Going to the park would be a bit out of the way, and I really dreaded the endless trek through the 10 for two hours.
Then it dawned on me: I could basically make the drive up to work, drop the mouse off in some super shrubby area that I know have a good deal of mice anyway, ramble off to the Getty which is only 6 miles from work. I just hope that there isn't a GREAT deal of drivers trying to make their way to the 405 as I will be in that short 3 mile stretch, but by the time I hit the freeway, it shouldn't be so bad (and I could always take Sepulveda). Of course, 405S in the morning is much worse than 405N at that time, but I'd rather deal with that for a mile or two than parking lot traffic on the 10 for the majority of the trip. Plus, this alternate route is only about 2 miles longer than the 10, and it theoretically saves me 20 minutes in the worst traffic.
I'm very happy to know that the mouse will finally be leaving my house, and that I'll be able to let it go in a place that has a fighting chance at surviving, and is not out of my very, very long day ahead.
My mouse saga is almost at an end, and I wonder how I'll feel when I finally let the little thing go. I'm sure I'll be happy, and when it goes, I'll send a little prayer that the thing doesn't fall victim to my boss' hunter of a cat.
Since my last entry on the matter, I've had a glass mug propped up with a nickel, then a penny to get this little bugger in my grasp. Turns out the mug is far too heavy for the teeny baby mouse to move the thing and trigger the coin to fall.
So, I've decided to pull the one string I had and picked up one of these from someone that responded to a Freecycle ad I posted:
I've got the big guns. This was given to me by a very big animal lover and after talking about things, was already trying to convert me to become a vegetarian. Before I get too much into that, we discussed strategies on how to get the mouse into this cold trap, like putting the peanut butter bait on a napkin atop the bait area to act as a ramp for it as well as a cover.
I did just that as I got home. I took all the peanut butter I had stuck on the failed mug trap and plopped it on a piece of napkin, left a little peanut on one end of the napkin ramp and easily set the trap after spending a good amount of time figuring it out (even though I did do that with the woman who gave it to me, but it didn't seem like that was the proper way). I went to bed thinking that I'd have a mouse in the trap by the morning, because up until now, I've been re-baiting traps and I've basically been feeding the thing. Now she would be MINE.
After being woken up by my roommate's leaving first thing in the morning, I got up to check the trap.
THE NAPKIN OF PEANUT BUTTER WAS COMPLETELY GONE.
I see NO trace of the napkin, which was a 2 ply swatch that probably had a 10 square in area. I would think the thing dragged the little motherload away somewhere, but I really can't see where/ how it could have been taken away anywhere that far (it's in my room). Maybe it ate its own volume in peanut butter and took the napkin with it to better cushion its fat little nest, as it awaits for its next feast. I can't believe it's evaded me again, and I'm still completely baffled as to where it is. I really hope that I don't find a peanut buttered napkin bit amongst my clothes. I'd be seriously grossed out with that.
I've had it. This little thing is too clever. What is this mouse? Did it escape from some laboratory where it's some kind of human-smart mouse baby made to irritate clueless girls who live in squalor? Maybe I'm the mouse and a mouse and I've developed some sort of schizophrenia and I eat the peanut butter when I sleep, and get trapped in shoebox traps and nibble my way out when I'm at work? What would it even mean to create a split personality of a baby mouse? Does that mean I'm lonely or just plain crazy?
I now have no napkin to "soften the blow." I have two small gobs of peanut butter in the middle of the bait tray, and I made sure the trigger is pretty sensitive. My biggest concern is the fact that it's a teeny thing and it won't even have the weight to trigger that already sensitive switch. But I've seriously had it with this mouse. I'm almost afraid that if this method doesn't work, I may just settle for a kill trap...
...okay not really, but I'm seriously tired of this mouse.
Presented with the opportunity to go out and chill with a very good friend with whom I haven't spoken in much too long of a time (our span: 2-3 weeks), I regretfully had to delay the chance by saying I had to go home first, because I had to check my fresh trap and see if I would have a mouse under a glass over a nickel.
NOPE!
Thanks to the chunky peanut butter we have, a tiny peanut morsel has dropped from the cluster, as if to lure it into the dome before it starts trying for the chunky peanut buttery ceiling. But none of that was eaten.
Maybe it's sad because it didn't have any treats last night, and now it's become a lazy creature of habit.
That's too bad, because that means it's becoming like me, who postponed goings out due to the fact my said friend is going to nab dinner right now and I'll just be lazy and settled after she's done.
Solo Katamari playing it is! Here's hoping that in that time, Mousey will decide it wants din-din.
If you haven't been following this whole saga of mine, there a mouse in my house. I know because anytime I forget I have some kind of food item in a bag that I put in my room, it inevitably and eventually gets nibbled through. So my roommate got the sticky mouse traps which I wasn't too keen on using, which caught the little sucker once, but it managed to escape that. Then I set up a shoebox trap, which was rendered ineffective, mostly because it didn't want the Triscuit I left it.
I figured after the sticky trap incident, it was gone.
BUT NO.
I discovered it was still around when I had accidentally (maybe this is my way of learning a lesson, perhaps? Because it's worked!) left some food in a bag, and the little bugger gnawed THROUGH the bag to get to the food! Then it did it AGAIN for another bag that had a pouch of instant oatmeal I completely forgot about!!! HOW DARE YOU. That was it!!!
So I took the shoebox trap from its original location to my room. I restrung the trap, made the triscuit piece smaller and covered it with peanut butter. I then took the other Triscuit bit, covered that in PB and put it at the opening of the box (like a lure) and for good measure and since it would be a waste otherwise, I took some of the oats from the pack and sprinkled a bit of that in there.
The next morning, I saw that it took the morsel at the front of the box. I just hoped that when I got home, it would maybe try for the main course.
When I get to my room, I see that the box is closed. Not all the way, but closed where the edge of the lid and the box proper were touching each other. I carefully lifted the box and gently tipped it from side to side to see if there was something in there...nothing. I then notice a bit of gnawing at one corner of the box where it wasn't closed all the way. THE BASTARD ESCAPED!
OOOOOOH that was it.
In the meantime, I put up an ad on Freecycle to see if anyone had a no-kill mousetrap they weren't using. I got one reply to use the Victory traps, which is one of those spring-loaded, kill traps...I guess someone didn't understand the no-kill part of the no-kill mousetrap. But I did get a response that was constructive exchange from this person, like using peanut butter instead of cheese, etc. and finally mentioned he had a trap that I could use and pick up. He gave me his address and said he'd have it next to the trash bins for me to pick up. I was fine with that.
I went to go map where it was, and following his instructions, saw the area where I was supposed to go (Thanks to Google Street View). For some reason I'm not going to get very detailed right now, I got a slightly strange vibe from the whole situation. Not that I thought that this was all bogus, but something didn't seem...right about things.
Either way, I asked if I could pick it up today as I was going to Pasadena tonight and going there would be along my way. He said it was fine. Only, when I emailed to see to confirm all's good to pick it up today, I get no answer. So, I didn't get it.
Now I'm just tired of this mouse. Sometime within this hour, I was sitting here in my room with the lights on, and hear this scurrying. I quickly look to the door, and see the thing wriggling from under my door and dashed to behind the fan. I'd otherwise try to tear up all that junk I have there, but I know it would be a waste of my time and it would just get away.
I think it might be time to buy myself a proper trap...until I used the Internet.
What you basically do is flatten one part of a toilet paper roll, tape coins to it, place it at the edge of a drop and leave bits of bait near the trap and at the edge of the trap. The mouse will get the first bait nibble, then will want to go to the one at the end of the tube. The weight of the mouse with the coins will cause it to fall, where you should have a pretty tall plastic bin where it will stay until you can take care of it. They recommend putting rags and towels at the bottom to soften its fall.
I would do this method, if it actually went on high enough surfaces, but it doesn't.
Then I finally had the wherewithal to scroll to the bottom of the page to look at related projects! Viola! I found THE ONE:
Jar or weighty glass, check. Nickel, check. Peanut butter, check. Mouse...let's see about that.
If I were a little more clever and had more time (and if I wasn't so cheap since I've been using materials I have around the house), I'd want to make this one:
I find it ingenious that the kill mousetrap is used to create a quite literal catch all device. The image above is the trap already executed, so basically the wire mesh is laid out like a ramp as the mouse goes for the bait on the trap, and when it's triggered, the mesh just shuts in on it. That's awesome.
Once I'm done with this post, I'm going out to the kitchen to get my ingredients for the glass trap. Maybe I'll catch it tonight. I am slightly worried the thing won't be able to breathe if under there for too long, which would defeat the purpose of going though all these no-kill efforts. I'm debating whether I should use an actual jar, or one of our mugs that are heavier and larger...the mouse may be dirty, but that's what soap and water's for right?
*sometime not now, preferably of natural causes, not by my own doing. I don't want my room/house to become like this:
I would rather be doing this in the very near future, but not in the snow:
Sometime this weekend Nat went to cleaning the corner of the fridge that Esteban likes to stay, and when she moved the fridge to get back there, she saw our little housemate mouse scurry from its hiding place under the fridge to the stove. She then proceeded to put out the sticky mouse traps to try catching it.
I was sitting here in my room, being sad and thinking about my baby, when I hear this soft, yet frantic scrambling sound. Then I hear the squeaking. That kind of noise being made at this kind of hour only meant one thing: the mouse got caught. I don't jump up to see what's going on, because in my mind I start to wonder...so then what? I find the mouse stuck to it little sticky trap, and I just take it and put it in the trash? Do I risk getting bitten and whatnot and try loosing it from the trap, and just let it out outside so it can fend for itself with all the cats in the neighborhood? What? What would I do?
I go out into the kitchen, turn on the lights, and try to check which trap it was stuck to. I couldn't see the one behind the stove, but that could have been from the angle I was trying to see it. But the one behind the fridge was obviously not there when I hear more of the scrambling and squeaking. It came from the laundry room. I look down to my hamper just in time to see this little thing shimmy behind my hamper, and the next thing I see is this grey thing scurry straight to the washer. On the other side of the hamper is one of the mousetraps.
What I figure it did was that it went for the bait, got stuck, went really crazy, and having managed to pass through the back of my hamper, it loosed itself?
I need some thread, and shoebox mousetrap is now needed.
As much as I wouldn't want to admit it, I'm more than certain that there's a mouse living in the house.
First of all, there are the little nibblings I witness when I left a bag of cookies or peanuts in a ziplock bag. I think I'm in denial when I tell myself the wear and tear of transporting the bag made it so, but I should know better.
And there's that little rustlings I hear when it's really quiet and I'm in the kitchen, or worse, in my room. I'd think that with the pile of filth in which I live, it's just a matter of plastic and things settling and moving in my room.
Icing on the cake was yesterday (Sunday, I started this entry Monday night) when I was in my room, and I happened to glance towards the kitchen and my doorway and see some silhouette scurry across across. It was quick and small and very mouse shaped-like.
So I casually mention it to my roommate. She either didn't hear me, or she decided to pretend not to hear me.
I come home today to an empty house. remembering that my roommate didn't go to work today, she was undoubtedly out and about somewhere. Not long after I got home, and I was already washing dishes, she was back, and in her hand was a bag from the 99 Cents Only store, and she approached me at the sink as she dug around the bag for something.
She bought me not one, but two different types of mouse traps. They were the sticky sort, something like mouse paper.
After I finished the dishes, I held both packets and read the wrappers carefully, and even examined the Spanish side as if I could parse more information from that side. I fixated on the part that mentioned the trap is disposable with the mouse.
That's the part that me very sad...because that meant, the mouse gets disposed of too. Does it really have to get to that point? How could I just get a little critter stuck in icky sticky paper, and just throw it away in my trash? And then what happens after that? The little mouse sticks to the paper like that until it dies?
On top of that, how could I set up the trap? Should I put it somewhere in my room, evne though I don't know what path it regularly takes? I saw it dash across my doorway but I can't very well just put a mat of sticky paper, because we have an African desert tortoise that likes walking around, and if he were to get stuck to the stuff, what then? How upsetting will that be for my roommate?
What I was really planning on doing is what we did when there was a mouse when I was still living with my parents. We noticed that there were little nibblings here and there, in my sister's room and in the kitchen. Then we started noticing moving silhouettes dashing from one place to another. We then named our "pet" mouse Pinkywinky, and soon enough, my sister and I actually saw the thing, and as if it was required of the female kind, we erupted in a chorus of squeals as soon as it dashed in our direction.
My dad set up several mouse traps. These traps were made using a shoebox, a bit of thin, cotton thread, and some bait like a peanut or some grain. The bait is tied around the thread, then is tied around the lid with the bait suspended in the middle of the lid. The lid, top side down, is placed on the floor, and the actual box part of the shoebox is placed over the lid, and is held open by the thread tied around the lid. Here is a visual:
When the mouse comes, it goes in and nibbles on the bait, breaking the thread, and the weight of the box that was being held up by the thread will fall onto and around the mouse. You then have a trapped, live mouse.
There were several traps set up throughout the house, and the one that got Pinkywinky was the one my sister decided to make that was just outside her room. She noticed that the box was closed, and thought the trap failed, but when she picked it up, she heard something slide around inside it. PINKYWINKY!
I sadly wasn't able to go face to face with our "pet." My sister and dad kept it in a cage we had outside, so I could see the scruffy thing, but it made its way out of it by the time I got home. I heard he wasn't as adorable and more scrappy looking.
Not that it should be that difficult, but I think I'll make myself a trap that way. I'm pretty sure that I have a vacant shoebox, and I can ask for thread from my roommate who just bought herself a new sewing machine...I think I can better live with myself that way...
It's too bad I can't make myself one of these: Then again, I'm not ready to go to The Playa for this endavour.
I really don't know. I know that's not helpful, but I'm currently using this space to place random thoughts and ideas I may not otherwise get the chance to address in my everyday life.
