Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Hello, Mr. Mouse! {Part 1}

As you probably know, we've had a visitor 'round these parts for the past week or two. And he wasn't exactly welcome, either.

Yup, he was a mouse - and after discussing it, we decided to name him "Earl".

While we're generally pretty rodent-friendly people, Earl wasn't exactly making a nice houseguest for us, from his first appearance (where we tried to hunt him down only to discover he disappeared, leading to his ever-more frequent tours of our house - usually while I'm screaming and Barley is barking [at me, not the mouse, of course!]), it was evident that something had to be done.

You know, especially since Barley is our little useless Un-Rat Terrier. I tell ya, it's a good thing he's cute.


So after getting fed up with Earl's frightening scares, we asked you guys what in the world we should do about it. We didn't want to kill him, but he was quickly wearing out whatever welcome he might have once had. You guys suggested a humane mousetrap - and thanks to our friend Clyde (who has an athletic blog), he sent us a link to this nice humane mousetrap on Amazon (what doesn't Amazon carry? Really, they have everything. Sorta like The Mart. But virtual.)


After reading some reviews, we bought it.

A couple days later we received our little booby-trap in the mail. We opened it and spent a few minutes reading the instructions and generally trying to figure out how it works.

There's two doors that are rigged up to a little bait bowl in the middle of the trap. Once the rodent moves the bait bowl, it triggers the trap and the doors fly closed and lock.


We got a cracker with peanut butter on it for bait and set the trap.



We left the trap in the hall broom/linen closet on the floor, and at night or during the day (Barley was put in his kennel) we'd leave the door to the closet open.

The first night we set the trap, we woke up the next morning and there was no mouse but the bait was gone! We couldn't believe how we were outsmarted by a mouse! He just took that huge cracker with that peanut butter and left, just like that! Haha, we had a pretty good laugh about that, all right.

So, we set the trap again. This time we set the door triggers a little differently so they were more sensitive, and we put the peanut butter on the bottom of the cracker and stuck it to the bait bowl, so the mouse would have to seriously tug on it to get it off. And hopefully trip the trigger. And be trapped. Mwahaha!

We left to do some Christmas shopping and find and order our dream sofas....

And when we returned...

There was Earl!


He was NOT HAPPY to be caught, let-me-tell-you. But it was fun to actually get to see him for once!

Isn't he cute?!


We're so glad we didn't get a kill trap, because he reminded us of our first fur-baby son, Mel. Earl was just as adorable, even though he was only about half the size of Mel.


It was funny, but the cracker was bigger than he was! Too bad we didn't get to see him dragging that peanut-butter-covered-cracker away, I bet that would've been hilarious!

Anyways, once we caught the little rascal it was time to figure out juuussst what to do with him....

{Click here for Part 2!}


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7 comments:

  1. I'm impressed that you guys caught him! I've never seen that kind of a trap before, but I'm glad you used it because he's really cute. Good job!

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  2. eek he is cute! our roommate used a regular mouse trap to kill one in our house awhile ago and it made me so sad. I don't want mice in our house, but I don't like the thought of killing them either. glad you found a humane solution that worked!

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  3. Introduce him to Barley and explain what he is first.

    Nifty trap! I'm glad Earl will no longer be terrorizing the Fossil. And yeah, he's cute.

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  4. Aw, he really is cute!! Although I would FREAK if there were a mouse in our house. Our dog would definitely go crazy trying to chase after it. I'm anxious to hear what became of Earl!

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  5. I laughed out loud at this one. Those pix of Earl are giving me the heebie jeebis though.

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  6. He had a good amount of mice when we first moved here. They FREAK ME OUT! Those sucker are smart. They would peel the back of the trap open and steel the food!

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