How to Catch a Mouse

The title is rhetorical because I have no friggen idea. Mickey’s back. With a vengeance. And the bastard has some balls on him. The lights can be on, the TV on, people in the apartment making noise and it doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. He’s been spotted two more times, both times by Lauren, who has suddenly changed her tune about not being bothered by mice. Apparently, what she meant before was, she’s not bothered when I see mice. She’s very bothered when she sees mice. Lauren and I have been reduced to turning on the kitchen light and scanning the floor calling, “here Mickey,” before we step foot in the kitchen. We also discovered that we can reach the dishwasher without having to step into the kitchen if we just bend over far enough. That's called survival instincts.

Joe was here visiting this weekend and we went to a movie, during which I received a text from Lauren, informing me that she had just seen Mickey by her laundry bag which was on the kitchen floor in front of the laundry closet. When Joe and I got back to the apartment, Lauren and I sent him in to assess the situation while we peeked from behind the kitchen doorway. He picked up the laundry bag and shook it out and when he turned around Lauren was standing upright on top of a bar stool. It’s safer up there. Joe, being a take charge kind of guy, did some research online and found a highly recommended method for trapping mice without a trap.

So he built this contraption.


The idea is that the mouse runs up the ramp and into the empty toilet paper roll which has a dollop of peanut butter on the end. The mouse goes for the peanut butter and the weight of the mouse causes the toilet paper roll to fall into the trash can and the mouse is trapped in the trash can. Seems reasonable. The trap has now been set for three days. No mouse. We want to catch the mouse but we also don’t have any idea what we would do if we actually found a mouse in the trash can. I’m certainly not going near it and we all know “I can see just fine from way up here on this stool” Lauren isn’t going to touch it either. So we’ll probably have to call the maintenance guy, which will be lots of fun since he already loves us from that time Lauren and I both locked ourselves out of the apartment within 30 minutes of each other after hours on a Sunday. But such are the predicaments we find ourselves in when man and nature mix. Which is also why I have long been an advocate of only experiencing nature via the Discovery channel.