As usual, hubris goeth before a fall.

Remember how sure I was that the mice were on the run? How boastful I was? "Ha," said Fate. "I shall teach you to believe you have dominion over your world, or the ecosystem therein."

Last night, right after I finished that last post, I walked into the kitchen and saw a mouse skitter behind the stove. So I laid a trap for it and went to bed.

I woke up this morning to retrieve the trap before the boys got up ... and it was gone.

It appears the mice have merely been laying low, training in their underground bodybuilding center and using mousetraps in their Pilates sessions. We must now cope with a new enemy, a breed of Mouseneggers who might start making off with whole cantaloupes. From the fridge.

Comments

[javamama]

Ewwwww! If experience has taught me anything, it's that you should be looking around underneath EVERYTHING because the mouse probably got halfway caught and then skittered itself and the the trap around before expiring. Bleah.

[kidsmom]

Okay, image to be stored in brain: Pilate Reformer as Mousetrap.
It will never be the same for me.

[E]

Perhaps their underground body building center is in the basement of a Taco Bell where they've teamed up with the rats to market a new cantaloupe smoothie!

[Dana]

Maybe rodents bearing barbells is the "Ruckus" the neighbors are hearing below -- they need to cut your boys some slack!

[TSM]

As much as I adore the critters, the very best traps are the glue traps. Just don't ask me what to do with them after you catch them. You don't want my recipe.

[MammaLoves]

We're living with Mousdini here in VA. He keeps seeming to find a way in and out of our shed which the husband has literally hermetically sealed.

[samantha Jo Campen]

My. Stomach. Hurts. From. All. The. Laughing.

[Jamie]

This sounds gross- okay, it IS gross- but it has worked for me and everyone who has tried it. Ferret poop. Find someone with a ferret (or a pet store) and ask for a little poop (dried out). If you live in a house, take some and put it in a gallon of water. Let this "brew" outside in the sun for a few days, the pour around the house. Inside, place some poop anyplace you see mouse activity (out of the reach of children, of course). This also works for moles.

[sgazzetti]

I think I'd rather have mice than ferret poop in my house. And for the moles: trust me, it's worth paying to see a licensed dermatologist.

[KAT]

Oooh, you know it's bad when they start fighting back! They've probably already put a call out for reinforcements. You need to call every ferret owner you know and start negotiating poop prices. Quick, to the battle stations!

[You can call me, 'Sir']

Wow. I smell a sitcom.

[LOD]

Sir: Spot-on observation. The events of the last five months could make a memoir that makes "Remembrance of Things Past" look like a friggin' pamphlet.

[Virginia Gal]

When my DH and I were living in Charlottesville (yes, that one, home to your alma mater) - we used a humane trap to catch and release the little buggers. That is, until my DH had the bright idea to spray the most recently released mouse with a bit of spray paint to see if it was the same mouse returning...we never saw another mouse. We figured either he was traumatized or it killed him. Either way, we were better off!

(linked from DGM)

[Helen]

I guess it was only a matter of time before they got wise to the traps and figured out how to use them to their advantage.

[Jamie]

You should probably be wary of any new furniture that appears in the room that has a six pack and a pizza in the middle of it, just to be on the safe side.

[Annie]

You think mice are bad? I live in Utah and my yard is full of voles. They are mice on steroids! They are carniverous scavengers who eat up my yard, build tunnels under my front lawn, and scare the neighbor kids. My husband and I resorted to smoke bombs and turned our yard into a gas chamber. Violent? Yes! Necessary? Absolutely.

[Caron]

Keep an eye on any pet cats you may have.

[Dad Gone Mad]

There is but one fail-safe solution, Douglas.

Torch the place.

[Evel]

I had the same problem....get a cat.

[Kathee]

I swear this happened to me last fall. I set a trap in our library which has a large window with an equally large limestone aloe-filled planter underneath it. I set the trap in an open spot in the planter, and it has never been seen again.

Now, the options are that the mouse tunneled down into the dirt and took the trap with it, or that the mouse left the room dragging the trap looking like Captain Hook, or that the mouse died and went to mouse heaven taking the trap with it. I like the third option.

[Heather B.]

I saw a mouse once, promptly freaked out and slept at a friend's house. The next morning I put out traps in the kitchen and in my closets (where I had seen the mouse). I wrote about my freak out of course and then forgot about the mouse because I never saw little Mickey again. But people kept asking me about it and so I was all oh I forgot it about and that was that.

Then two weeks ago, the temperature dropped again while I happened to be out of town. I come home the next evening and am looking around my bedroom and there in my closet, in the sticky traps is not one but TWO mice. TWO. I almost died and had to drink myself into a stupor in order to remove the trap from my closet.

It was like one got stuck and then it's friend came to help and it got stuck as well. But at least they died together.