we're mur-diddly-urdelers

So we have mice. We first discovered, ah, evidence of them a couple of days ago. We had left some crackers in a ziploc bag on the counter, and the mice got up there, chewed the bag open, ate the crackers and pooped all over the counter. So gross.

We cleaned out the pantry and discovered that they had been on the floor, and on the first shelf which had no food, but it doesn't look like they made it up to the higher shelves where the food is stored. To be safe we bought more canisters and made sure all food was secure. No more soft plastic containers that mice might chew through. And we put everything bread-like up high in those hanging baskets people store onions in.

We read online that mice are repelled by Bounce dryer sheets, so we bought a box and put them everywhere we thought the mice might be. The smell is certainly repellant -- why on earth would people pay to have their clothes smell like this? -- but I don't think it's doing much to the mice. I saw one up on the counter, after we put the Bounce sheets out. I was up late and I heard a noise in the kitchen. Tiptoed in and turned on the dining room light. There it was, an adorable little grey field mouse sitting on the edge of the counter. It saw me and dropped over the side. I think it used the power cable from the stove to climb up onto the counter.

We did a little more research after that, and found out that mice breed very fast; if you see one, you have many; and they like to chew up electrical insulation and can cause fires in older houses.

So, we called Critter Control and they're coming tomorrow. We also put out a couple of traps. I really hate killing mice. Especially now that I've seen how cute they are. When I thought we just had one or two, I even suggested we catch them and keep them as pets. (Yeah, Georg liked that idea about as much as you would expect.) But we can't have a mouse invasion living in the crawl space, stealing our food, contaminating our countertops and chewing on our wiring. I've read that a quick kill trap is kinder than releasing them in a field somewhere, where they'll either starve to death or a predator will kill them.

We put the traps out last night and a mouse got caught this afternoon. I heard the trap snap. Cree-pee. Georg had promised to deal with trap disposal and I held him to his word, staying out of the kitchen until he got home. Poor mousie.