Saturday Slight

Call it entrapment.  Call it inhumane.  Call me a murderer.  

I don't care.

I am a serial killer, and in this case, it's so Bill can enjoy his breakfast cereal without any extra nutrients. 

I'm on the rampage, and it's nothing new for this year.

I griped yesterday on this blog about the brazen mouse eating off my corn stalks, but I ended my post with a pretty positive attitude. 

Minutes later, I turned into a mad woman, later a premeditated murderer.

It all began as Debbie and I sat at the kitchen island.  She was sampling a piece of warm Mennonite sourdough bread, slathered with Imperial margarine and a few globs of my newly processed plum jelly.

I also pulled out the cut-up tomatoes and zucchini which reside in the refrigerator, swimming in a bowl of Italian dressing, enhanced by apple cider vinegar, sugar, olive oil and fresh onion. 

Debbie liked the tangy zucchini slice, but we both agreed that such spicy sampling is better later in the day.

The bread and jelly hit the spot, though. 

As we talked, I sensed movement on the floor below.  

We both watched in horror as a little mouse raced across the floor toward the stove.  Bill had reported a sighting earlier in the week; in his sighting, the critter had run to an opening between the lower cabinet and the stove. I later stuffed the opening with aluminum foil.

With blood pressure rising and language deteriorating, I expressed my extreme thoughts to Debbie about this latest invasion into our space by those nasty creatures. 

She agreed, recalling how awful she felt when they took up residence in her car. 

Less than five minutes later, Debbie screamed and tried desperately to spit out some words. 

She had just watched an even bigger mouse appear on the counter and disappear behind the microwave. 

Well, I was not happy.  

What else can I say to properly express the depth of my revulsion?

Out came the mousetraps that had moved to the house since our new cat Jonas had moved into the barn. 

I dabbed some peanut butter on two traps, and we left the house, in hopes that, in our absence, the creatures would look for breakfast and find their maker. 

That was not to happen. 

When I returned about half an hour later, the traps still had peanut butter and no mice.  

I used one of those long-handled pickers to methodically grab boxes of graham crackers, packages of yeast and other packaged items that had been stacked near the microwave.  

I brought out the cleaning agents and scoured the stove, the counter and every place those dirty things could have left their tracks.  The good news is that we did not find much mouse fecal matter.

That means they haven't been invading for very long.

During my cleaning binge, John Fuller came.  He was supposed to come this morning, but his schedule had opened up and allowed him to drive to my place yesterday instead.

"Do you have time?" he asked.  John had come to replace Heather's lost shoe. 

A litany of complaining along with "yes, I do have time," flew his direction from my mouth.  

"Oh, yes," he said, "it's getting cold at night and they're moving inside."  John had told me earlier about his annual mousetrap line which he sets up every year about this time in his house.

"Oh, they love it near our hot water tank," he told me yesterday. 

John says he sets up the line and after a few days activity stops, and he's good for another year. 

After John finished with Heather and left, I sent a note to Bill.  

"Bring home more mousetraps," it read.  Bill complied.

Last night seven loaded traps sat at strategic spots around our kitchen.  I also put one in the hot-water-tank room.

This morning the kitchen traps were empty, except for the peanut butter.   I opened the door to the hot-water-tank room and found the trap had been licked clean but not tripped.

"Load up one of those new ones," Bill suggested from the living room.

So I did.  Then, I headed outside to take horses to pasture.

Five minutes later, Bill came outside.

"Got one," he yelled, flinging it into the barnyard.

"From where?" I asked.

"The hot-water tank room," he answered.

"Load up again," I said. 

So, here we are, in early September, fighting another mouse invasion in our house for the third year in a row.   

Both Bill and I wonder why we never saw one mouse in our house for the first two years we lived here.

Of course, during those first years, we did not have deer eating up the garden or mice eating the corn, for that matter.  

I'm wondering if those five strands of electric fence surrounding the place and every single enclosure when the previous owners lived here has anything to do with keeping the thieving critters out.  

I don't know the answer to why the mice show up here in multitudes, but I do know that these disgusting, dirty, destructive creatures bring out my killer instincts.

And, that's coming from a person who once held a pistol, pointed it at what I thought was a grouse and could not pull the trigger.

Turned out the "grouse" was a stump which was granted a stay of execution.

Not so with these mice!