Murderous intent - I will win! I must win!

I wasn't going to tell you this story.  I have to now, given what happened at the supermarket tonight.

It's well documented that the long drought followed by a wet season has led to a mouse plague.  I always thought that living on the second floor of a double brick building would leave me safe from these invaders, but I now know that I am wrong.  They are getting in somewhere and it's doing my head in.

I'd been fighting a war of attrition with one over about a month.  Traps laced with delicious peanut butter did nothing to lure the mouse.  I'm sure he was parading by regularly, leading a tour group past the various sites and stopping to pose for photos.

I won that war a couple of weeks ago in a way too horrible to recount here.  I'm an animal lover and can not deal with killing animals myself.  Even if I do have murderous intent when it comes to mice.  Anyway, that mouse was dispatched and I breathed easy in the knowledge that my house guest was gone.

A week later, the unthinkable happened.  I heard a rustling, scratching, munching  sound that suggested the next shift had moved in.  Last night, I heard scurrying and caught site of a brown body, fast as lightning, disappearing into a gap.  Silly mouse.  It was the site of the last mouse's demise.  I knew exactly what to do.  I set my last remaining trap (the last one died a horrible death, along with the mouse it executed) in the same, prime spot.  Ah-ha!  The perfect plan.

During the night I thought I heard the snap of the trap and tiptoed out this morning feeling something halfway between hope and dread as I looked to see whether I'd caught anything.  The trap had gone off, but was lying broken in two, with no sign of a mouse.  Visions of a gigantic devil mouse, snapping the trap with a cavalier flick of its tail, started to take shape in my mind.  Further steps would need to be taken.  I had no traps left.

When my day finished I headed straight to the supermarket.  I searched the aisles for pest control.  The signs were not helpful.  I found what I needed at the end of the aisle marked "baby".  I found that confusing.

Two other women were gathered around the shelves debating the merits of ratsack poison and baits.  Me, being me, I said hello and said it was great to see I wasn't the only person with a mouse problem.

Well, we bonded as we swapped tips on how to get rid of the mice.  One of the women asked me what I use and I showed her the traps.  When I mentioned that I also sprinkle peppermint oil over everything (apparently the mice hate it) she looked at me as if I was some freaking hippy.  She pursed her lips and shook her head.  She then gave me a five minute survey of where to look for "gaps" (pipes coming in, pipes going out, behind the laundry tub, in the bathroom cupboard where the pipes are...you get the idea).  Once I locate these gaps I must pack them tightly with steel wool.

"My whole house is stuffed with steel wool," she proudly proclaimed as she nodded her head.

She then advised me on the merits of poison compared to baits including detailed information on how the various poisons work and how one of the agents is actually a blood thinner given to humans.  That made me squirm.  Don't get the doses wrong.

I left armed with new traps, a packet of bait and a new found determination.  The woman I'd been talking to said it was the best conversation she'd had all day.  As we turned away she asked me what the best thing to use in the traps is.

"Peanut butter," I called.

"Crunchy or smooth," she asked.

Oh, for goodness sake.  "Whichever one you've got.  I don't think the mice care and if they do, I don't!"

The new design scheme is minimalist with the occasion decorative accent fashioned from steel wool.  I'll need to buy more.  Anyone know how to cut it?  At the moment, one corner of my kitchen is looking like I've dropped the steel wool on the floor; there's too much to stuff in the gap and I need to cut it into a smaller portion.

Can't they just leave?  I don't like the feeling of focussing on the destruction of another living creature, but I can not coexist with mice.  Today I completed the empathy quotient (EQ) test.  One of the questions asked how I felt about the suffering of animals.  I hesitated before I ticked a box.

Now I'm plagued - not just by a mouse (mice?) but by the sounds of mice.  God help me.

There's a mouse in the house: how to win a battle of wits.

A week ago it became clear that there is a mouse in the house.  This happens periodically and I have no idea how they get into my first floor apartment.  The mouse is not welcome in this house and the moment I have a suspicion I open the jar of peanut butter, slather a generous smear on the jaws of a mousetrap and I wait.  It usually takes no longer than five days. It's a canny, cunning, slippery mouse that has taken up residence this time.

You may wonder how I know I have a mouse.  In the past there has been a surprise, face-to-face encounter which has left the mouse as shocked as me.  It's a shame the mouse can't just drop dead from an adrenalin surge.  Last time I had a guest I was sitting at the kitchen table thinking.  The house was pretty quiet and there was movement that caught my eye.  I looked over and saw a mouse considering me.  When I turned and saw the mouse I inhaled sharply.  So did the mouse. And then it hid behind the washing machine.  Out came the peanut butter and the trap was laid.

Each morning I would look behind the door in trepidation.  There's only one thing worse than dealing with a live mouse in the house and that's a dead mouse that needs to be removed from the house.  It took about a week before the mouse was disabled.  I wondered how anyone, including a mouse, could resist the delicious enticement of peanut butter for so long.  After five seconds of considering this, I realised that peanut butter may be less appealing when it is smeared on an instrument of death.

One of the design "features" of my kitchen is that I have an open pantry - open shelving with no doors.  After a serious moth infestation a few years ago, I've become hyper-vigilant about storing pantry goods in airtight containers.  I've obviously missed something though.  Sitting in the kitchen the other day I could hear a "scrabbling" sound.  I would stop what I was doing and just listen.  I would hear silence.  As soon as I would go back to doing what I was doing, the sound would start again.  Cunning mouse.  Trickster mouse!  I shook the shelves and saw a flash of grey fur shoot out and run behind the stove.  These mice are really good at hiding in really skinny places behind really big, immobile appliances.

And so the traps were laid.  Nothing so far.  Not even a sniff.

What I really need is Alfie the Jack Russell.  He's the world's greatest mouser.  He literally sniffs them out.  You can hear him sniff and he stands his ground until the fridge is moved, the dishwasher unplumbed, the walls pulled apart.  He is never wrong.  He is very efficient.  A mouse doesn't stand a chance.  He grabs the mouse, shakes his head and that mouse is history.  (You can see the killer here.)

My current battle is nothing on the mouse plague I experienced in western Queensland in the 1980's.  People put the legs of their beds in buckets of water in an effort to stop the mice joining them in bed.  Shudder.  I will never forget standing in a moving sea of mice when my father turned the air-seeder on.  It was full of mice.  When the machinery was turned on, a seething mass of mice poured out of it.  There were kids, cats, dogs, Mum and the pet lamb fighting a losing battle.  It was truly revolting.  At one point I saw the cat looking utterly bewildered as it had mice pinned to the ground under all four paws.  It looked to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

If the traps aren't full in the next couple of days, I'll pull everything off the pantry shelves and find the little bugger.  I hope there's only one.

What's your mouse catching strategy? Peanut butter or cheese?  Baits?