Of mice and (wo)man

A couple weeks ago I began waking up at 4:00 am every night.

Not due to age-related bladder issues, and certainly not to go jogging! Nope, I was actually waking up because there was something scratching on—or more precisely scratching INSIDE, my bedroom wall.

After a few days it was pretty obvious that there was something in the wall. Probably a mouse, but possibly a ghost... truthfully, I was hoping for a ghost!

At any rate, I figured the thing was getting into the wall through the attic. So bravely (or stupidly) I climbed up to take a look around. Keeping in mind that I wasn’t particularly fond of the attic even before I thought it might be infested with rodents or ghosts!

While I was there I set out plenty of poison in case it was a mouse, and a little bit of holy water on the off chance it was a ghost.

When a decidedly UNHOLY smell began to emanate from the attic a few days later, I ruled out ghosts. And while I was somewhat relieved not to be the victim of a haunting, the smell was a supernatural force of its own! In fact, it’s hard to believe a single dead mouse could cause such a smell. Maybe a single donkey, but not a little mouse. Yikes!

I tried not to think about the (possibly large) number of rotting rodents surrounding me at any given moment and I dealt with the smell as best I could. I burnt candles, opened windows and even bought a bag of volcanic rock that absorbed a lot of the stink. But since the poison appeared to have done its job, I was back to sleeping through the night.

That is until last night when I woke up, not at 4:00 am to the sound of scratching but at 12:30 am when I FELT something run across my leg. I’m not even kidding!

It scared the crap out of me! And only got back to sleep after convincing myself that it probably wasn’t a mouse because: A) a mouse wouldn’t have a reason to be in my bedroom in the first place and B) even if a mouse was in my bedroom it wouldn’t go to the effort to climb all the way up onto my bed to run across my leg.

Ergo, it must have been a dream!

In the light of day however, I began to doubt my nighttime justifications. So I sought reassurance from some coworkers by asking if they thought a person would even be able to FEEL a teeny-tiny, lightweight little mouse run across them at night. The answer was a resounding, “well, yeah!”

Not the answer I was looking for!

So tonight I am pulling out the big guns. On the advice of one of the coworkers I bought a TOMCAT Multiple Catch Mouse Trap and (as instructed) a bag of peanuts in the shell to use as bait. **Side note, apparently it’s impossible to buy a bag containing fewer that “one million” peanuts in the shell at Woodman’s—okay, slight exaggeration, but you seriously can’t buy one with less than a full pound of peanuts, which is way more than the one or two I needed. But I digress.

My coworker claimed the TOMCAT is a good trapping method because mice are smart and they can learn to avoid traps if they see a buddy killed. And since “my mouse” would end up in the trap with a peanut, it might call out and tell its friends to join the buffet.

She also explained that the obvious downside of any live trap is that you end up with live mice—trapped. And warned against leaving them in the trap too long, because they can chew their way out.

Leaving a population of mice that are smart, angry and probably pretty motivated to find the rest of the peanuts you just bought.