Bout that time again...

...to put a fresh dollop of peanut butter on those traps and line my doorway with dryer sheets. Unless I'm just REALLY paranoid, I think I heard the sounds of a mouse scamper beneath my door and into my room last night. It's been about 7 months since we last dealt with mice. I guess total annihilation was wishful thinking.

Photo courtesy: http://peanut-butter-toast.blogspot.com/2007/10/country-mouse-v-city-mouse.html

A Mouse Tail (this one's for you Dad)

Once upon a time there was a girl, and one frigid day in January, she moved to a magical place full of power and mystique. Although this place was beautiful and magnificent in its grandeur, the city contained a dirty secret behind its walls and bellow its streets – MICE and lots of ’em!

If you’ll recall, I had been dealing with ONE mouse (I was in constant denial that there was ever more than one) that I affectionately called Peebs. The cunning little dude successfully ate all the peanut butter clean off the traps without so much as splitting a single hair, let alone getting his head chopped off. This was no ordinary mouse. He was smart, tricky, and elusive. For several months I put a lot of faith in wives tales and dryer sheets and hoped against hope that Peebs would just leave. But he didn’t. And I dealt with it for a while, but he became more daring with each passing day. The little vermin showed himself on many occasions even when guests were over and pooped where he pleased. We rearranged our kitchen, but that didn’t deter him.

The last straw finally came. Peebs ate my birthday cake. MY BIRTHDAY CAKE! Not any of the other roommates, but mine. Me who lived off of the kitchen, me who had sleepless nights wondering what that noise was and if the mouse would climb up my bed and eat my eyes. A line had been crossed. It was him or me. I was paying rent so Peebs had to go.

Peebs put up a good fight. He brought in the troops for reinforcement and they were cunning little guys. But we were smarter and more resilient. Before the traps were set, Tara and I noticed three mice (Peebs, Hammy, and Swiss) were in our empty recycle bin trying to jump into our trash can. We did the first thing that popped into our minds and trapped them in the can with a lid. We decided the best way to dispose of them was to put a peanut butter-covered poison cube in the trash can and place them outside in the freezing cold. So we did. Tara duct taped the lid shut for good measure and put the can in the backyard where it remained until two days ago when Tara and I finally disposed of it (if you’re wondering the 3 mice were still in there – I checked).

Although we had a small victory with the conquest at Recycle Bin, there was no time to rest on our laurels. Peebs had been defeated, yes, but his troops were as persistent as ever to conquer our kitchen. So out came the D-Con – grade A, top notch, inescapable traps.

At final count, we entrapped and disposed of fourteen little rodents within about twelve days. Some traps remain as a precaution, but it seems that if any mice survived Operation Annihilation, then they quickly retreated and set up camp elsewhere.

And the girl lived (and slept) happily ever after.

And at no point in time were they ever rats, Dad!

I'm not the only one

So one of my favorite places to visit on the web is the dcist website (www.dcist.com). There's always info on what's happening in the district accompanied with great shots of the city.

I have a mouse problem (which I'm hoping is resovled), but Tenelytown has a rat problem. Click on the story and read it and the comments. People here are funny!

http://dcist.com/2008/05/22/tenleytown_is_i.php#comments

Back...?

So I stepped back from the blog for three weeks because life just got busy, and apparently I've left some of you wondering about the whole mouse situation. You're all asking, "is it back? Is it dead? Has Chelsea been eaten by a pack of mice?"

The answers to these questions are maybe, we thought so at one point, and not yet.

With the poison laid and the dryer sheets protecting my doorway, I finally slept peacefully in my own bed for the first time in two weeks. For all intent and purposes, I assumed the mouse dead. I showed a little too much glee when three of the roommates tore the felt off the bottom of the couch looking for what they thought was the body of the dead mouse. Alas, the mouse was not there. I went to bed thinking that the weird odor was of the rotting mouse body from behind the wall and I slept well knowing that.

Fast forward to this past Friday evening: It had been several weeks since I had seen or heard any trace of Peebs (my affectionate nickname for PB&J) so I decided that I could probably toss out the dryer sheets that were guarding my threshold. Big mistake. (PS Did I also mention that we had purchased these highly sensitive sonar nosemaker things that are suposed to drive mice away? Well we did, and one is in my room and the other in the kitchen.)

I don't know what I heard or what shadow I saw, but my imagination led me to believe that Peebs was back. So at 12:30am I'm wide awake and freaking out again. I cursed myself for throwing away the dryer sheets. I don't know if they really helped, but they were the crutch that helped me sleep peacefully at night thinking that the strong smell drove the mouse away, keeping it from crossing into my room. An hour and a half later, I turn the volume up on my copy of Fleming's Thais and drift asleep to the intoxicating melodies, hoping that a pack of mice don't come and take me away.

I could've sworn that I saw a little critter scurry into my room and back out again that night. The next day, I placed the dryer sheets back across my doorway. I've been sleeping peacefully since. So who knows if the mouse is dead. But there sure is a funky smell that could certainly be a dead mouse behind the walls rotting away. And only time will tell if I'll be carried away by a pack of mice demanding to be served peanut butter...

So there's the update on the mouse. The last three weeks of events will slowly trickle onto the blog. Stay tuned.

The Standoff

First of all, Dad, it is NOT a rat. It's a mouse. I've stared it down.

Day Four
A quiet evening at home turned into a thirty minute standoff with my mouse. While the 3rd and 4th acts of Otello played in the background, I stood on my chair in the corner of my room, broom in hand, waiting for the mouse to show itself. As it scurried from behind my bookcase to the dresser and under my bed several times, I was never able to get a good shot at it to whack it with the broom. When Laura got home, we set the traps and I slept in Mel's bed again (she was still in Italy).

Day Five
The mouse ate the peanut butter off the mouse trap we placed behind the couch, but there was no mouse. I left for the weekend so I put any thoughts of the mouse out of my head.

Day Seven
While staring out the window talking to my mom, I watched our landlord take the trash out. As soon as she came back inside, I saw a little mouse run from the same direction. "Sweet!" I thought, "It's out of my house." As it ran across the street, I secretly hoped that it would get ran over by a car so I would no longer have this rodent plaguing me. I didn't see the mouse when I came home from Macbeth, so I put my headphones on and went to bed, hoping I wouldn't be visited during the night.

Day Eight
Mel and I got back from the grocery store, and as she put away her wares I was getting her caught up on my mouse issue. While telling my adventure, I point to underneath my bed, and in the shadows we both spot the mouse. Figuring the mouse would stay in my room, we continued to put away groceries. The mouse comes running past my feet. We both scream and I run into the living room. I just stand there. Mel’s talking to her mom and starts pointing at my feet. I freak out and jump on the couch because the mouse has run past my feet again! I swear this mouse has something against me, which I don’t know why because I keep feeding it peanut butter. The landlord comes up because she’s heard our screams and hands us some rat poison. She also said that mice don’t like the smell of dryer sheets. I reloaded the mouse traps with peanut butter and placed one in the kitchen and one behind the couch. I placed several dryer sheets along the threshold of my room and one at each of my bed posts. I put my headphones on again and reluctantly climbed into bed.

Day Nine
The peanut butter was gone from both traps. We are dealing with a genius here that is bound and determined to taunt me. Before going to bed super late, I spotted the mouse. It ran from behind the couch and as soon as it saw me, ran right back. So now this is war! I grabbed the rat poison, covered it in peanut butter and placed it on the mouse trap.

Day Ten
The peanut butter was licked clean off the rat poison. I had a dream that the mouse came into my room. I was wielding a broom, so I started hitting it. I swept it down the stairs and it hit several on the way down. Then I smacked it until it was dead. As gross as the mouse is, there is still a cute quality to it that I don’t think I could do that. But rat poison? No problem!

Day Twelve
Haven’t seen the mouse since Tuesday night. Maybe the rat poison took care of business. However, there are weird noises throughout the house that I swear is my mouse walking behind the walls. If I start smelling something weird, I’ll know something worked. But if nothing works and my mouse is still alive, I might just have to name it and continue feeding it peanut butter. Maybe I’ll name it PB&J.