Thursday, May 30, 2013

Liz versus the mouse in the house

I'm back from unexpected hiatus. Life has been a little hectic between work, softball, and as you can guess from the title of this post, there was a mouse in my apartment. See?


About 2 weeks ago I woke up at 3AM to some noise. I tried to rationalize that it was probably just me tossing and turning in my sleep. In my groggy state I thought I saw something move, but thought I was just overreacting to a shadow. Well, this continued for a couple of days when I would hear a noise and try to convince myself that it was nothing.

Flash forward to Monday May 20th when I wake up again at 5:46AM and actually see the mouse. 100% confirmed there was a mouse. So  I started picking up my messy corner where the mouse had been spotted. Found out that it had a sweet tooth and ate half a chocolate Christmas ornament I didn't know what under my piles of stuff.



Anyway, pest control dropped by my apartment to drop some glue traps under the radiator while I set to work building a homemade mouse trap. I watched some YouTube videos about how to catch mice in buckets. A lot of videos actually. I worry that my "recommended for you" section will be permanently damaged. I mean just look at that badass trap.

I started to get attached. I gave the mouse a name. Actually, I gave the mouse a lot of names. First it was Jerry, an unoriginal reference to Tom and Jerry. But I had so much trouble remembering the name Jerry that I called him Tom sometimes.
I got so caught up in this whole ordeal that I didn't even noticed I made the same pop culture reference to the whole situation. Get your head in the game Liz. I mean I had a couple on the back burner. Like reenacting the cemetery scene from The Sound of Music with yours truly as Rolf with the flashlight.



At the end of each day, I would just hope that it would be over. That I would wake up and it would be caught. Or I would walk in after work and he would be caught. Or he would just slip up while I was at home watching tv and get caught. That's all I ever wanted.
It took awhile, but finally TJSHF was caught on Monday night. Around 11PM or so I heard noises meaning TJSHF was up and ready to scurry around my apartment. I tried to pinpoint his location and in my search I found him in a glue trap under the radiator. That was a moment of pride and sadness.

Anyway, this mouse on a glue trap situation was not one I was prepared for. Pest control didn't leave any instructions about what to do. So I turn to my dear friend the internet. Google "what to do with a mouse on a glue trap." Well the results are a bit mixed, to put it politely. Sites like AskMen and Good Me Project offered many different ways to kill a mouse, but in the moment I did not want to consider that as on option.

WikiHow had a useful article about how to unstick a mouse from glue so I went with that. And it was very simple. 1) Place mouse+glue trap into a deep container with a lid. 2) Drizzle a little vegetable oil on top 3) Cover and wait a minute for the mouse to wriggle free 4) Release mouse into wild. Voila! So I did just that. But not before taking a picture of the little oiled-up bugger.



So my chapter with the mouse finally came to a close. I hope. Every little noise spooks me now. Like if the floor creaks or the television clicks. Perhaps it is just phantom mice noise. I really hope it is that and not a friend of TJSHF.

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