Mouse Vent

Well, Pixie hasn't quite tired of the mouse in the house thing. Sigh. Surely the novelty will wear off soon. Twice this week I had to remove the ones she brought in to play with all night long. And, sadly, that is actually preferable to another alternative that I was worried about the first time Mike and I discovered we were better mouse catchers than we would have ever imagined. Good thing the mouse thing didn't turn out to be like the tooth pulling thing...neither one of us can handle pulling a child's tooth out so they pretty much have to do that on their own. So anyway, back to the Mouse Vent...

Remember the first time Pixie let a mouse go and then literally sat back and watched us run around like nuts moving furniture to catch that dang thing in the computer room? Well, I was eyeballing the vent wondering about the size of the openings and thinking I bet a mouse can fit through those holes. I even looked at new ones...well, they were a little too pricey to replace 15 vents all at once. I should have started then a couple at a time, but you know me, that would have bothered me having different vents for 6 months. Then it happened. One night, Pixie must have either gotten bored or one got away...right down a vent. I saw it the next day, but it got away from me too! I opened a window hoping it would hop out but noooo....it had the sweet life!!

The mouse discovered it go anywhere it wanted! The cat food in the kitchen, the cat food in the master bath were prime destinations. What a bold little mousie! Way to give it back to the predator that brought you in the house in the first place! What amazing irony! I appreciated that, but it wasn't going to continue! Mice have babies you know....ALL the time!

So we went to Home Depot and bought some Kind mouse traps and some Vicious mouse traps. And a couple new vents to try out. Which are actually called registers. Fact of the day. We bought a little baby sized milk crate about 6"x 6" and used a trick my mom said my dad devised. Mike cut a larger hole so the mouse could get in and put it over the Kind mouse trap - sticky paper with dry cat food on top. It's like fly paper for rodents and has something in it like a nerve agent that's supposed to put them to sleep. Mike put something really heavy on top of that so the cats couldn't get to it by mistake. The new registers went by the other cat dish so the mouse would be forced to come out near the trap if it wanted fast food...I hoped.

It took a day and a half. Pretty much exactly when Mike would be gone for 14+ hours on the road trip to Missouri with Taryn. Another piece of irony I did not appreciate. I was in the computer room when all of a sudden I heard a racket. Amazing how much noise one mouse trying to tap dance on fly paper can make. I crept in and saw it and it was so pitiful. I hate killling things. So I put a big bucket over the whole thing so I wouldn't have to see it and maybe muffle the noise. My mom said it would feel better dying in a dark safe place. Thanks mom! It was agonizing listening to the thing dance for its life. I couldn't take it. I went outside. I actually felt guilty. It was a cute little mouse. Sniff.

I couldn't go to the bathroom in my own bathroom. I couldn't hang out on my computer because I had one ear cocked to listen for the mouse. I couldn't take my bubble bath either. Are you kidding me? Every time I thought it was finally in mousie heaven, it made noise again! When Mike finally got home he lifted the plastic bucket, and there were two little beady eyes staring at him! Oh, and by the way, that little mousie had tap danced its way off the paper! What a survivor! Mike performed a mousie evacuation and amazingly enough, that little rodent actually lived to tell the tale.....to his forest friends! Let's hope he had enough time to recover from his 4 hour nerve agent induced nap before Pixie or Diego caught sight of him! Not that I really care, but geez, that little thing deserved a breather.

So, that was the story part of the Mouse Vent....the real vent of the Vent, another mouse in the vent yesterday. A different kind of mouse, so not a baby of the first one. I was doing the tap dancing this time in my commode room to keep it in there while Mike came running in to catch it. That is a hilarious story, but this is long enough. So a couple hundred bucks later we have 15 new vents that are mousie proof. Twenty dollar cat door so Pixie could go in and out at night. Yeah, that was worth it.