Nursing Mamma Found Dead

Time: Between 12am - 6am on 12/6/06
Location: Laundry Room
Method: Victor Mouse Trap

The pesky little buggah has been caught. Now we wait and see if the babies will perish and whether Pop will pick up where Mamma left off.

Since the summer we've had an on-again-off-again mouse problem. Initially they were finding their way into the house via the fireplace. Some steel wool, a few humane traps, and several weeks later, the mice disappeared. A few weeks ago, I noticed a bunch of droppings in the laundry room.

AAAHHHH!!!

Completely disgusted, I went on a cleaning spree and called Orkin. Between the time of my call and the arrival of an Orkin rep, I heard the critters in the wall, losing a bit of my sanity every day. The worst was hearing them in the kitchen. I have these horrible images of the mice chewing through the wall and pouring out, one by one -- like clowns exiting a car -- onto my counter tops and rummaging through anything that isn't sealed. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

These feelings stem back from when we lived in DC. It was spring, 2003. For about a month we heard scratching within our living-room wall. We told our landlords, they laid out the poison, the scratching stopped. But we soon discover that its death did not occur with the poison, by Mr. LandLord, in the boiler room. No, it was starvation.

The week of critters death I happened to be working on a biology project for school. Keep one plant in the sunlight, the other in darkness and report your results at various times throughout the week. I chose to keep my second plant in one of the bedroom closets. On day 2 I noticed an unpleasant odor in the air. By day 7 the stench was unbearable and when I went to retrieve my plant from the closet I nearly lost my lunch. Fearing what I would find, I waited for my man to come home and uncover the source. After a few minutes of convincing him the odor wasn't gas, he began cleaning out the closet.

M: "Holy Sh*t!"
F: "What?"
M: "I found the source"
F: *pause* "And..."
M: "It's a rat!"

I left the apartment.

Then, as luck would have it, we had another rat die in our apartment. This time under the kitchen floorboard AND in the middle of summer. We at out a lot that summer.

Mice aren't rats, but they're still foul. Last week Orkin visits, Orkin leaves and 4 days later the mice didn't fall for any of Orkin's traps (more humane traps at that). No more Ms. Lets-Be-Kind. This is all out war. Back at Home Depot, we purchase the ol' skool "snap-your-back" traps, added some cream cheese and *SNAP*! Let's see you outsmart this one, little buggah!