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A few weeks ago I opened a rarely used drawer in my kitchen and found a surprise. There, nicely piled in one corner, was a slightly chewed, slightly melted stash of M&M peanuts.
We had a mouse.
In case there was any doubt, he’d thoughtfully left behind his biological calling cards and helped himself to a tasty bit of liner paper. I called my husband over to show him, expecting an equal measure of shock and dismay. Instead I received a calm reminder that we do, in fact, live in a log home. In the woods. Surrounded by all manner of wild life. Wasn’t it just a matter of time?
Well, maybe. I’m not skittish about small creatures. I do run from bugs and spiders, but that’s what husbands are for, right? We’ve had adventures with opossums on the porch, deer and rabbits in the yard, a visiting family of raccoons one time. We’ve even been blessed with bard owls, hawks and breathtaking song birds. But they’ve all kept their polite, adorable distance.
None of them had the audacity to move into one of my kitchen drawers.
My husband leaned over my shoulder and peered at the tiny, colorful pile of candy. “Kinda cute though. Imagine all the hard work it took to carry each piece up here.”
Cute my @#%. This was war.
The mouse made it into that particular drawer because he’d found a way into the cabinet just beneath. I spent the afternoon taking everything out of the drawer and cabinet and scrubbing it all down. Then I used steel wool to plug a whole in the bottom of the cabinet where a power line came through. Finally, I removed the source of the candy.
Of course, blocking him out and removing food wasn’t going to get rid of him. I ruled out spring traps because they seemed so brutal and glue traps as too inhumane. Animal lover that I am, I went out and bought a supply of those catch and release traps, then spent the next week trying to lure him with everything from cheese to peanut butter, to you guessed it – M&M peanuts.
But he wasn’t falling for it. He thumbed his tiny little nose at me and proceeded to rebuild another stockpile, this time of dog food, in the same lower cabinet, up on a shelf, in an overturned lid. Imagine my joy when I stumbled upon this. How could I forget to put the dog food out of reach? Sigh.
Frustrated beyond belief, I pulled everything out, cleaned it all again, then found a tiny, tiny hole in one corner behind a lip of wood. I plugged it with steel wool, and went back to the hardware store for spring traps. I was tired of playing around.
We set several traps, but the one sure to work, we smugly placed in an empty potato chip bag. We had him this time.
The next morning the bag was empty. No mouse. No trap. I finally found the trap across the laundry room floor, under a utility sink, wedged between a pair of work boots – empty. But he was kind enough to gnaw all the corners off the trap rendering it a nice oval shape.
Who was this masked mouse?
Next came poison, more spring traps, more sealed nooks and crannies. If nothing else, he was prompting me to methodically clean every inch of my kitchen and laundry room. Bless his little heart.
By this time he’d found a way onto my kitchen counter and I was highly motivated to put an end to his shenanigans. Feeling trapped in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, I gave in and bought glue traps. I came downstairs the next morning and found the glue trap I’d so cleverly hidden on the counter now lying empty on the floor, but there was evidence of a struggle. Apparently I’d caught him, but he had more lives than the average cat.
I pictured him limping away, cussing a blue streak that would put a wharf rat to shame.
Obviously, I didn’t have the right glue trap for this particularly heroic mouse. I tried another brand. And, well, let’s just say, three weeks and countless dollars later, he may have won the battles, but I won the war.
When all was said and done I somehow felt like the villain in the piece. He was a worthy adversary. But it’s wonderful beyond words to have my kitchen back.
So tell me, is there any particularly humorous or perhaps scary animal encounter you’d like to share? Any unusual or unusually talented home invaders?
by Darcy Crowder
28 comments
If I’ve had unwanted visitors, my mind was kind enough to repress the memory. Except for that time (hey! In a log cabin!) when my hubby thought it was a good idea to brine a turkey in a Styrofoam cooler–outside–for Thanksgiving. We’re guessing it was a raccoon involved then.
I may have to point him in the direction of this blog, though, as he’s determined to take me further away from my beloved city to retire in a log cabin (not for another 35-40 years or so, but it’s not too early to try and dissuade him). I love to visit them, but nature and I do not get along for extended periods. *grin*
x♥x
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Darcy,
I just laughed my head off over your post.
Sorry that I found so much humor in your struggle, but when you said the little thief had stashed the trap in between major appliances and even chewed the edges for sport, I lost it.
I’m also glad you won that particular war…poor mouse, but, well, who needs the little buggers in their house?
I live in a house backed up to lovely woods and the yellow river. So I see deer, all the time, they eat my host as, opossum, and raccoons. We have cats and since I have a house full of allergy sufferers(not me, hubby, and kids) I have to keep my three kitties outside.
Their water bowl is where the raccoons wash their hands every night. Every morning the bowl is filled with dirt. Those raccoons sure are compulsive hand washers!
Other than that, things are pretty tame around here.
No mice…yet.
What a great post to wake up to. Everyone can use a giggle in the morning.
Have a happy day!
Tamara
Umm…I just realized I made it sound like the deer eat my host as (Hostas) and that they also eat opossum and raccoons.
I don’t have carnivorous, meat eating deer in my backyard…thank God.
Boy I really need my coffee!
Hope to see you Saturday,
Tamara
Darcy,
Great post! I laughed, but, sad to say, I do feel your pain. We’ve had workmen here for a couple of weeks. They bammed and flammed so much it drove TWO mice inside my cabinets! I’m sick of cleaning! BUT, I did pound my chest and laugh after catching those little buggers. I had no sad thoughts using glue traps.
It’s not a matter of DO I have an animal tale, it’s more like which one should I share. I renovated a 100+ Victorian and had frequent visitors. The snakes always found my daughter’s room (she’s phobic about them), the mice found mine and the kitchen, the squirrel was hanging from a ceiling tile one morning and almost ended up in my lap. But, my “favorite” was the night I learned what mouse toe nails felt like. Across my bare neck. In the middle of the night. Waking me up before it fell off the bed and into a garbage can. Not really a big fan of mice now, LOL.
Funny post! I’ve been there and done that in some form. I won’t share my squirrels stories because the animal loves will be on me. Let’s just say that my grown son’s friends say I’m hard.core.There is NO love between me and a squirrel.
ROFL! I can sooooo relate, Darcy! My first run-in with mice (as an adult….don’t get me started on some of the things we dealt with while growing up in the country in Wyoming) was when I was pregnant. Every time we bought or received something new for the baby, I would wash it up and store them away in a room under our stairs. We were getting ready to move and was just finishing up making the new place nice.
I walked into the room to put away a cute new outfit and what should I see but a trail of mice droppings all over the freshly laundered clothing and diligently scrubbed baby items. I went through the roof!
I immediately went out and purchased snapping traps (wasn’t going to let that little bugger get away with messing up all my hard work). I ruthlessly slathered them with peanut butter and did an evil little laugh and hand wring after setting them out.
Three hours later I was washing dishes and heard the trap snap. Excited to have caught the little bugger, I ran to the closet. Yes, I had caught myself a mouse. Problem was, my hormones would not allow me to revel in my excitement. As soon as I saw him, I started bawling like a little baby. I couldn’t even remove him from the room. I had to wait until my husband got home that evening. When he went to get the little guy, I started bawling again. It was hilarious (or so I can think this now that I have a few years on it). My husband still tells the story of how I started out as the Great Mouse Hunter and turned into the Cowardly Lion.
Funny thing is that even now I can’t deal with the traps. I can set them; but when I do, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. When we catch any, I just have to leave the room and let the men in my house deal with them. They think it’s hilarious and I don’t think I’ll ever live it down.
Thanks for making me laugh this morning, Darcy! This was a great story.
Tami
LOL Darcy. I know how irritating it is to hunt down critters that invade your house. Did you feel like Bill Murray on Caddyshack going after that gopher?
When we had dogs (big ones) we had a plastic garbage can full of dog food that stayed on our screened porch. One night my husband went out to the semi-dark porch to reach in for the scoop in the can and a possum hissed at him. Being the southern boy he is, my husband reached down and lifted the possum by his tail, carried him downstairs to the yard and released him where the dogs would not get him. He had a little patch of different color on his back. Easy to identify.
By the third time we found him so full he couldn’t climb out of the dog food container, we’d named him Patches. I finally told my husband he had to take the possum to the woods and release him because we lived on a busy highway and I couldn’t take coming home to see a run over possum with that distinctive mark.
I’m not good with killing little things. I can cut the head off a fish and filet it without blinking an eye, but I can’t kill a bug. I put plastic containers over them and leave it for my husband who will usually take it outside and turn it loose.
Thanks for a good chuckle today.
Darcy, loved your post. That and Susan May saying there is no love between her and a squirrel. Oh, me.
My favorite animal invasion of the moment? My mom called the other day before my visit to tell me she had good news and bad news. The bad news? She hadn’t found the lizard. The good news? She had found Captain America’s shield. When I got done laughing, I had her explain how the lizard had got into the house in the first place. : )
Your post really had me laughing.
I haven’t seen a mouse in the house (although mice are so cute in the cartoons) although I did see an ugly old river rat running across the main street in my subdivision. Our subdivision is on the river.
We have deer who eat our flowers, but I love them so I don’t care. My neighbors really get mad though.
I have a friend who is scared to death of lizards. I don’t happen to mind them because they’re green, my favorite color. But I’ve never had one in my house, just outside.
I’m like Dianna. I can’t stand to look at bugs so when I find them dead in the house I have to throw a paper towel over them and let my husband get rid of them. Or if they’re alive I place a shoe on them (my husband’s shoe) until he comes home. It’s pretty funny looking.
Maybe you should have called an exterminator. One of my upcoming posts is about my exterminator so you’ll have to come back for that post.
Thanks for the laughs.
Marilyn
What a great post! Brings back memories. We had a similar incident a few years ago with a mouse that moved in. He kept moving from cabinet to cabinet. He’d get into the stove somehow and I’d be sitting in the dining room and see his little head pop out of the jet vent like whack-a-mole. We caught him a couple times in a catch-and-release trap; we’d take him to the woods about 2 blocks away and he kept coming back. We were convinced our pet rabbit was inviting him in for parties. We finally figured out that he was getting in through the dryer vent and managed to block it well enough that he couldn’t get back in. Now we have lizards…
I also remember a summer when I was young, when my parents had a rash of field mice in the attic. In the middle of the night we’d hear a snap, and my dad would go upstairs and dispose of the dead mouse. One night we heard the snap but then it was followed by a lot of frantic bumping. Dad went up and found that the trap had closed on the mouse’s tail, and it was banging it against everything in sight trying to get loose. He knew he had to kill it somehow, so he grabbed the only thing he could find that was heavy enough — his bowling ball. He got a strike…
Hi Noelle! Thanks for stopping by. I gotta tell ya, living in a log home is a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun.
We are in the woods, but also in a subdivision with large lots, so it’s not remote at all. All that said, I’m not a big “city” girl myself, so I can imagine you may feel like a fish out of water at the idea of retiring to the country. But that’s so far off, who knows how you’ll feel by then – it might grow on you. 
Tamara! So glad I could help you start your day off with a smile. Yeah, I caught the carnivorous deer – LOL. Don’t you just love all the nature around you? I love never knowing what I may see out the window…. We had an outside cat for several years – she must have done a great job of keeping the little mousy critters away – but we had to put her down a few years ago. Now the kids are after me to get another cat and keep this from happening again. But I love my birds too. Guess we’ll play it by ear for a while.
oh ladies, thanks for the laughs!
And the memories, I too don’t know which one to pick.
But having house cats has led to several ‘night-time’ incidents involving live mice, 2 cats and two, uh, unclothed humans? Oh and in the last couple of years, we’ve added a dog to the mix. Suffice to say, once the cats bring the mice to the bedroom at 3am, all hell breaks loose.
Two nights ago, I was up late writing and the cat captured a mole and had it on the screen porch, I finally captured the poor little thing and tossed it back out doors… of course, cussing the next morning at two fresh mole hills on the lawn – go figure!
And for years at the race track, finding mouse nests in the hay, meant carrying the ugly little pink critters to a safe place… so they could grow up and eat holes in the grain bags. sigh.
Yikes, Darcy. That mouse sounds talented. Too bad you couldn’t have captured him and sold him to the circus.
I hate the thought of furry creatures running around my house. I’m the type who stands on chairs and screams. Can’t help it, it’s a natural reflex toward anything crawly. Hubby laughs when I do that when I see a bug.
OMG, Debbie. I’m screaming now!!!! Eeewww.
I recently stood on the car bumper and yelled for hubby to remove a snake shudder but stuff with fur I can handle.
See, that’s the cool things about hubbies, snake removal and poop scooping are up there on my happy list
Maxine, I’m so sorry you had the added pressure of mice on top of all the other upheaval. Good for you on going straight for the glue! No messing around.
Oh my gosh, Debbie! A mouse across the back of the neck??? You win. LOL. I can’t even imagine.
Susan, you’re too funny. I immediately pictured you stepping out into the yard, shotgun in hand, issuing an ultimatum to any squirrel within hearing distance.
Go get ‘em!
Tami, don’t ya just had that? The worst part is having to clean EVERYTHING because you never know. Be it clothes or pots and pans. Sigh. I confess, I cried too. Couldn’t help thinking that the poor thing was no different than the hamster sleeping in his cage in the other room – this poor mouse just had the misfortune of being born in the wild, not a pet store. And here I am hunting him down instead of changing his food and water. Go figure.
Hi Dianna! LOL. I haven’t seen Caddyshack in ages, but yes, I guess I did feel a bit like Bill Murray. There was a time or two I found myself mumbling about catching that darned critter….
Hi Sally. Your poor mom. We have lizards too, but maybe only once have we ever had one in the house. Thankfully we caught him right away.
Hi Marilyn, glad I could make you laugh.
I don’t much like bugs either, but I’d take a bug over a mouse any day. Looking forward to your post, sounds interesting.
Hi EC, whack-a-mole! Love it. LOL. Sounds like you’ve had more experience at mouse hunting than I have. Maybe I’ll go hunt up that bowling ball….I know it’s in the basement somewhere.
Hi Kathy. Don’t ya just love those cats! I was constantly getting little “gifts” on the front porch from mine. Can’t imagine special delivery in the middle of the night.
Hi Linsey. I’ll admit to a scream a time or two when this little guy had the audacity to come out in the open and race across the room.
Aren’t husbands handy??
Ohmigosh, when we lived in Prattsville, Ark. we had a lively field mouse that enjoyed several boxes of crackers, oatmeal, graham crackers and cereal before I discovered his existence. All I can say was that he was well-fed before he died because we had to resort to the spring traps as well.
In Hawaii, it was little Gecko’s. Since there was no air-con and the windows open a lot, there was no getting rid of them. We carted them outside, hunted them down when they got too noisy during our TV programs, and was grateful for a cat who didn’t mind a good search and destroy, even if it did make him barf every time.
Then in Georgia, it was rats. No, not cute little mice, but big noisy rats between our basement and ground level floors. (We lived next to woods that were backed by a lake.) They’d moved in and invited their relatives to join them in their mondo-condo by the time we heard them. Honestly, from the noise they made, I thought a racoon or squirrels had gotten trapped in there. Never thought rats. Gross! Nests and nests of them. Hubby and son set huge spring traps loaded with cheese and peanut butter. They finally found the entry point and closed it off, then “caught” the rest of the colony one by one. But the damage was done by then. We ended up having to tear out basement ceilings, replace quite a bit of stinky, “nested” insulation, then replace and re-paint ceilings.
I think I’ve had my share of critters trying to invade my territory, thank you very much.
Glad to hear you won the battle with your unwanted visitor.
Darcy,
I’m soooo late to the party, but wanted to tell you how much I laughed at your post.
When we moved in here two years ago a squirrel got inside the eves…it took about 4 days for hubby to get him out and then repair the eve he had to rip up to get the little sucker. He found the hole and plugged it and all has been fine ever since.
Sandy
Hey Carol! I just checked back and found your post. I remember when you had that ‘colony’ problem. Since I wrote this blog we’ve actually caught a few more, so I guess we had a little family…. I think we have all the holes plugged now. Sigh. I sympathize with how much work you had to do to fix up after the invasion. I guess I can be thankful I don’t have an attic or a basement.
Glad to hear you’re not being invaded in your new place – but I miss you!!
Hi Sandy. Glad you got a chuckle. If all else fails, look at the funny side, right? LOL. Squirrels are the worst, aren’ they? My FIL had a squirrel problem in his place by a lake. It took forever to get those suckers trapped and out of there! Glad you’ve had success. HOpefully that will be the last of them, at least inside.