Unwanted Houseguests
- Sangamon County News
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Spring is here and more than blooms, warm weather, the sound of birds in the trees, it means one thing: Mice are coming for us.
Mice have literally been plaguing us since biblical times. Flaming hail pales by comparison. Only bats are worse; and they are really just flying mice. The mouse propaganda machine (cartoons) would have us believe mice are cute little creatures that wear tiny red shorts, suspenders and white gloves and live in a little arch-shaped door in your kitchen. Cartoons have been lying to us for years. I was in college before I knew anvils weren’t just for dropping on your enemies and I never ate bananas because I was afraid I’d slip on the peel. When I was a kid, Acme was the cartoon version of Wal-Mart. I digress.
The reasons to hate mice are many. First, in addition to being dirty, they are very focused. It would seem from my admittedly less-than-scientific observation that mice have a pretty sophisticated division of labor. From Project Manager to Quality Control Officer, mice are organized. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there is an org-chart under my ‘fridge. They probably have a bargaining unit, by-laws and casual Fridays.
Second, they have faces. Ants are bad, but they don’t look back at you when you see one lounging in your butter dish. The “junior varsity rat” I saw the other day seemed to be smirking at me and saying “I’m going to be sleeping in your bag of Cool Ranch Doritos tonight.” I’m waiting to see one with orange Cheeto-dusted claws. Yes….mice have claws.
There are many traps on the market, but I decided to try one comfortingly titled “Humane Capture.” The box said there’s no need to bait the trap because mice “are naturally curious.” I guess their hope was that the mouse will just wander into the trap just after it finishes spreading Hantavirus all over my dish drainer. Skeptically, I called the “Mouser Hotline” on the box and the operator told me “You don’t want to bait the trap and give them extra energy to escape.” Huh? It’s a one and a half inch mouse, not “The Incredible Hulk.” The “no bait” concept was completely counter intuitive. When I go fishing I don’t just hope a potential catch will look at my line and say “Hmmm, I wonder what that metal hook tastes like?” After the third day of finding little “poops” in the “containment chamber” and no mouse, I decided a new plan was in order. First they ate my food, now these little Leptospirosis-carrying omnivores were mocking me.
Glue traps were out of the question, “death by glue” seems extraordinarily sadistic. Poison wasn’t an option; a dead, malodorous mouse rotting under the floor boards isn’t any better than a hungry live one. The classic “snap trap” seemed like the only answer. There is a certain sense of nobility to be felled by a device so clearly modeled from the guillotine. Selecting the right bait seemed to be the key. If cartoons have taught us anything, the classic wedge of Swiss was always the fromage of choice, but my individually-wrapped Velveeta Slices didn’t seem like a reasonable substitute. I wondered “Would Baby Gouda work? How about an aged English Cotswold Double Gloucester, Norwegian Jarlsberger or a Venezuelan Beaver Cheese?” What if the mouse is lactose intolerant? I’ve heard peanut butter and bacon appeals to their palates, but pay day was still two days away. I decided to consult the internet.
I ran across a trap made by a company called “Milton Bradley.” The device appeared to be excessively complicated and must be incredibly slow. There was a steel ball that rolled down some tiny crooked stairs and then hit a boot which launched a plastic diver who then flew in the air and landed in a small bathtub, which in turn lowered a brightly colored cage onto the offending rodent. Maybe I should keep looking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously once said “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” I tried Google Maps, but they needed his zip code.