Mus Musculus Redux

Recently, I wrote a little piece on the joys of homeownership as it pertained to creepy crawlies and small rodents. Snafu and Fubar may think this is a grand old time, but this particular human is not nearly so joyful.

I was sitting on the couch a few weeks ago, minding my own business. The lights were on, the TV was going, Dan was puttering in the basement, and the cats were off doing cat things. Suddenly, mad scrabblings erupted from the vicinity of the kitchen. At first, I thought somebody’d gotten themselves stuck in the garbage can lid. I waited for a second and the scrabblings intensified, augmented by tiny little squeals and squeaks. Maybe somebody hurt himself trying to get free. I heaved my butt off the couch and went to investigate.

The mouse who’d been clever enough to escape the live trap, and eat the peanut butter off the snap trap (I know, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures)...decided to see if he could outwit two cats. Yep. Snafu had cornered a mouse in my kitchen. In broad daylight.

I started dancing around, shrieking encouragement to Snafu while looking for something to drop over the mouse to contain him. Snafu scrabbled from one end of the kitchen to the other and back again, bouncing off cabinets and table legs and the oven and the fridge, and one very confused Fubar. The mouse darted and ducked and squealed and ran over my bare foot. He ran under the fridge. The cats smacked into the fridge and frantically pawed underneath. Dan came up from the basement. And I ran upstairs to put on shoes and scrub my foot.

After we all recovered--which took a lot longer for me than it did the cats--and Dan stopped laughing at my reenactment, the cats camped out in the kitchen for the rest of the night. I brought up a small bucket and stashed it under the table, determined to be ready if the mouse decided to make another attempt.

Fubar and Snafu are on the job!

We eventually caught two mice over the next few days. I’m not going to go into details, but the kitchen is now mouse-free and bleached to within an inch of its life. The cats still hang out in the kitchen a lot more than they used to, though. Unsure if they’re reliving past glories or hoping for future conquests.

Whew.