I Hate Mice

There is a mouse in the house. I hate mice. I picture them creeping through the house and crawling across my kids and nosing around looking for crumbs. This is our second mouse in our 2 1/4 years in this house. The first one my husband thought was "cute" and insisted he'd call the mouse "George." He demanded a humane trap, so I borrowed one from my dad. Eventually we trapped George and he was moved to the woods behind our house.

The sad thing is that our cat and dog are lower than useless with mice. I've had my cat almost 10 years, and in that time she has brought one mouse in the house. By the time I found it was so dessicated that I couldn't determine cause of death. It could have starved.

When George was in the house we actually had the opportunity to expose both animals to him. He was sitting in the middle of a room so we brought in the dog, who seemed genuinely frightened by the little rodent. Later we had a chance to bring in the cat, who just didn't notice George.

Sometimes the cat likes to pretend she is a hunter, but I know her prey are having a good laugh. She seemed to be hunting the mouse tonight, but I'm not expecting any miracles. Something had her excited enough to be scurrying around the dining room.

In point of fact, I had realized we had a mouse in the garage a couple days ago, and asked my dad for the humane trap again. He suggested we might want to invest in our own at this point, and I hadn't done that yet. Then my husband announced "I see a rodent" as he was doing his stretching exercises. So I've been desperately searching the internet trying to decide if I should mail order the trap or go in search of a local hardware store that has it. Tomorrow will be devoted to mouse trap hunting. I want that critter out.