Miniseed

After this whole rodent-catching and disposing situation, we were left with a fish tank, a mouse wheel, two food dishes, and a bunch of bedding and mouse food.  I suppose it also left us with a rearranged pantry, a disinfected fireplace, and the idea of owning a pet.  Finally we caved in and paid another visit to PetCo.

He’s a Siberian Dwarf Hamster.  He’s white, has a small ear, red eyes, and a bunny-esque tail. We have yet to name him, but he’s a handful already.  When the expert store manager, who claimed to be the proud owner of several hamster privately, made an attempt to extract the mouse from its cage, he leap out of his cage and dropped 5 feet onto the floor.  Ouch!  The word “exchange” crossed my mind, but somehow we’ve already made the connection with him in the long two minutes we spent with him.  Thankfully there are no noticeable impairment from that fiasco, as he is gleefully racing in the mouse wheel next to me heading toward some imaginative destination.

Welcome the new member of the family.  This time, I believe he is here to stay.

After identifying the mouse as a “deer mouse”, we’ve looked into the perils of such a wild rodent, and in the end, we decided to ban its presence from the premises.  I carefully transported it to a grocery bag, went to an undisclosed location (and no it’s not my neighbor’s backyard), wished it a good life and dropped it off.  It immediately rushed to the nearest blackberry bush and disappeared.

Now it’s time for some cleanup…

It all started one day while Karen was blissfully preparing dinner when suddenly… she opened the pantry and uncovered chewed peanuts and broken candy wrappers ll over the place!  Certainly a strange phenomenon.

Then one night when Karen walked downstairs to get a drink, and she heard some noises in the pantry.  Immediately I ran downstairs to the rescue by surrounding the perimeter with cushions and proceeded to remove the items from the pantry, one by one.  Suddenly, the mouse jumped out and I let out a scream that remains a permanent part of the Karen’s blackmail arsenal.  The mouse hid in the corner as I contemplated a course of action.  At one point, Karen handed me the electrocuting fly zapper, but when she noticed how “cute” it was, she became protective.  After some futile attempts at grabbing the mouse, it lept over some feeble obstacles and darted into the fireplace.  We had found the breach in our perimeter.

So Karen and I visited our local Home Depot and tour the pest removal section.  We quickly dismissed rat poison as we only buy organic products.  We also dismissed the glue paper as the adhesion would cause the mouse to be permanently bonded–a cruel arrangement.  The traditional mouse trap would snap its head in half, leaving a disturbing sight.  Finally, we settled on the perfect tool: the Victor Live-Catch Mouse Trap.

Just place cheese or peanut butter in the opening, and when the mouse enteres the trap, the lid closes…

We placed some sliced, hardened Jack cheese in the trap and placed two traps head to head next to the fireplace.  After a few mouse dreams and nightmares, Karen and I woke in the morning and anxiously checked the trap.  Nothing.

So we switched to plan B.  Karen had bought peanut butter from Trader Joe’s (no trans-fat!) which smelled really good, so we spread some on a peanut and used it as bait instead.  After some more mouse dreams and tossing and turning, we woke up in the morning, ran downstairs and found that one of the lid was closed!  However, a quick inspected revealed nothing inside.  In fact, even the peanut-butter covered peanut was gone!  So we tried again, with a smaller peanut.

Nothing happened on the first day, but on the second day, Karen noticed that one of the traps was rotated 90 degrees!  I picked up the trap and took a quick peek–yup, mouse tail.  Karen excitedly headed to PetCo to pick up a cage, and we proceeded to put the mouse inside the cage.

Except…  the mouse was so small it squeezed between the bars, jumped out, and squeezed under the washer/dryer.  Finally I moved the washer and grabbed the mouse and placed it in a box.  Karen returned to PetCo and bought a fish tank, mouse food, pine bedding & litter, exercise wheel, and the works, which is the new place of residence for this little guy.

Welcome our new member of the family!