We did some renovations to our foundation last fall, and as a result a mouse moved in. I am not sure how long it was in the house before I noticed it, as our cat likely kept it living on the fringes and there were no “traces”. I first noticed it when I went to take out the Christmas decor, and found that it had stripped the decorative/dried cobs of corn that were stored in the furnace room. It left behind the empty cobs, the wax that had coated the kernel and plenty of traces. I hunted all around the furnace room, left the door open for the cat to take care of it, and watched for signs that it had moved into other parts of the
house and found nothing. I assumed we were good.

A couple of weeks later I went into the cupboard in my kitchen island and there they
were. Traces. This made me freak out a little, as it had clearly moved into our part of the
house, and I sent Willy to the store to get some traps. We He installed them after the lils went to sleep that night, and within 30 minutes I heard the telltale snap! and the problem was solved. Willy tidied up and we had our house back.

A few weeks ago I went down to the basement and noticed that there was a little pile of flour sitting outside my emergency bag of flour. Thinking that one of the lils had accidentally ripped a hole in it, I leaned down to have a look. Then I saw them. Traces. They definitely weren’t from the lils, but I wasn’t sure if they had been recently left by a mouse, so I started to hunt again. A day or two later it was clear that we had a new mouse when the traces appeared in the same cupboard. It is the one that our stove top vent goes down, where there is theoretically access from the basement. The mouse didn’t seem to go past that cupboard, but it didn’t matter. This one was in our space too.

The next day I left for my weekend away with my girlfriends. Before leaving I wrote a note for Willy with meal ideas, the phone number where I would be, and one instruction; “KILL THE MOUSE“. I was disappointed when I got home and it was still around, so I asked or hinted about it daily. As of lunch today the trap had not been set and the mouse was not dead.

Getting more than a little uncomfortable with our uninvited guest, I suggested to Willy that I knew where the mouse might be residing, and that that might be a good place to put the trap. He didn’t really react, and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything about it. He even accused me of not having clearly stated my wish to have the mouse terminated. Apparently the note I left and the daily “hints” were not enough, as, according to him, I had not sworn about it yet.

I leaned in and whispered in his ear, “kill the fucking mouse”. Trap is set.