A point of clarification about said adventures with city pests

Yes, as I mentioned in my last post, we have had our fair share of mice. But I feel the need to elaborate so that I won't be written off as just plain gross. It was right after we moved in, H and I were settling down to a nice episode of Netflixed something-or-other, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something scurrying? No...it couldn't be. Suddenly, my husband was saying the same thing. Is that...? No. We tried to settle back down to the story-telling bliss that is HBO drama, and then it was unmistakable. A blip in our image-flashing apartment, clear as the blood-curdling scream I let out the next moment, squeezing between a tiny little hole at the bottom of our front door. Oh, did we ever pay our city-dwelling dues then. We caught roughly 10 mice in the next week. We rigged our apartment up like a giant booby-trap, tiptoeing around metal jaws meant to break little mouse backs. When we discovered the peanut butter delicately but completely licked off one of our own safeguards, we started to buy other things: sticky traps and plastic ones that were supposed to snap shut when the mice wandered in. And here's where the oh so gruesome part of the story comes in. Those plastic traps don't work. Not well enough. In the middle of the night, just as sleep is setting in and our minds are melting into puddles of fuzziness, we here a distinct snap. Followed by a distinct squeal. Followed by a flapping noise and more squeals. We headed out to the living room to find not one but TWO little baby mice feet sticking out of the jaws, kicking and trying their hardest to get somewhere. It was, let me say, awful. To make a painful story brief, my husband dropped the trap in a bucket of water, while I sat on the couch and cried. I won't even go into what happened with the sticky traps.

So that's our mice story. And if you take away one thing let it be this: if you're catching mice, stick to the traditional traps. If they lick the peanut butter off, throw the trap away and set a new one. Words of wisdom from a reluctant but seasoned mouse torturer.