Useless Damned Terriers…. Seriously
I have a cupboard in my kitchen where I keep the dog food, safely sealed in plastic containers.
The last few days I’ve noticed some little shards of plastic in with the dogs’ kibble. Tiny little shredded pieces of plastic.
Closer inspection of the plastic containers showed what looked like tiny little chew marks around the upper edges, and around the lid hinges on the back.
I became suspicious that I had a mouse in the cupboard. But I couldn’t figure out how a mouse could get up on one of the containers to do the chewing on the top edge. I thought it was pretty unlikely they could just scale the sides. So I checked out the inter webs to see how high mice can jump:
Well, the little bastards can really jump… about 20 times their own height, to be precise. But I think the actual landing on the top of the container might have been pure luck.
At this point I feel like I need to remind you that I have two terriers living in my house, and one of them climbs into this very cupboard every time I’m preparing their meals.
You’d think that a serious hunting terrier like Forrest would know that a critter had been in that cupboard and take great interest. At the very least he should hear the little bastard flinging his body around the cupboard, hoping to get lucky and land on the container. But no… useless damned terriers. Seriously. They had absolutely no clue what was going on in there!
I tend to keep mousetraps on hand because it’s not unusual to get mice in the house when the temps get cold. So, last night I got out a trap, smeared some chunky peanut butter on the landing pad, and set the trap.
I learned a trick years ago… you put the trap on top of a couple of layers of newspaper, and once you catch a mouse, you can just pick up the newspaper, mouse and trap all in one nice package and put it in the garbage.
(At this point, I have to tell you that my mother was very frugal and would re-use mouse traps. She would pull up the spring and remove the mouse, wash off the trap, and use it again. I do not subscribe to this method. Little wooden mousetraps are damned cheap. I’m not willing to get that intimate with a mouse whose neck was just snapped.)
This morning, I was anxious to check the trap and see if I’d caught one of the furry little buggers. WTF? The landing pad on the trap had been licked completely clean of the peanut butter, and the trap had NOT gone off!
How the hell does a mouse lick the trap clean of peanut butter and not set off the trap? I’ve actually seen this happen before, and am pretty amazed since I nearly snap off two fingers every time I try to set one.
So, tonight after I got home from work I got out another trap, some Q-tips, latex gloves, paper towels, the peanut butter, and some spray cheese. Since the mouse had obviously been on the trap in the cupboard, I used great precautions to maintain good anti-mouse sanitation in the process.
I thought it might be a good idea to give the mouse the choice of cheese and peanut butter. I used the Q-tips to really press the food items nicely into the little holes on the landing pad. I set the traps, put them back in the cupboard, and loaded up the dogs and headed off to agility class.
When I got home I checked the cupboard and voila! The mousetrap with the peanut butter was again licked clean. But the cheese flavored trap contained one furry little quite dead mouse with a neck snapped like a twig.
Mouse and trap were disposed of quickly and easily, and I set another trap. I wonder if I’ll catch another one.
Edited to add: the traps were empty when I checked them first thing this morning. But after my shower, when I opened the cupboard to fix the dogs' breakfast, one of the traps had tripped, was sitting upside down, and there was a dead mouse about 10 inches away -- with no visible signs of trauma. What the hell happened there? Maybe the trap scared him to death!
Edited again to add: I heard the trap go off for the third time as I was heading back to work after lunch. I couldn't bring myself to deal with it then, so I get to deal with it when I get home from work!
One piece of advice: be careful when you check the inter webs for pictures of “mouse in a trap.”
The last few days I’ve noticed some little shards of plastic in with the dogs’ kibble. Tiny little shredded pieces of plastic.
Closer inspection of the plastic containers showed what looked like tiny little chew marks around the upper edges, and around the lid hinges on the back.
I became suspicious that I had a mouse in the cupboard. But I couldn’t figure out how a mouse could get up on one of the containers to do the chewing on the top edge. I thought it was pretty unlikely they could just scale the sides. So I checked out the inter webs to see how high mice can jump:
Click to viewWell, the little bastards can really jump… about 20 times their own height, to be precise. But I think the actual landing on the top of the container might have been pure luck.
At this point I feel like I need to remind you that I have two terriers living in my house, and one of them climbs into this very cupboard every time I’m preparing their meals.
You’d think that a serious hunting terrier like Forrest would know that a critter had been in that cupboard and take great interest. At the very least he should hear the little bastard flinging his body around the cupboard, hoping to get lucky and land on the container. But no… useless damned terriers. Seriously. They had absolutely no clue what was going on in there!
I tend to keep mousetraps on hand because it’s not unusual to get mice in the house when the temps get cold. So, last night I got out a trap, smeared some chunky peanut butter on the landing pad, and set the trap.
I learned a trick years ago… you put the trap on top of a couple of layers of newspaper, and once you catch a mouse, you can just pick up the newspaper, mouse and trap all in one nice package and put it in the garbage.
(At this point, I have to tell you that my mother was very frugal and would re-use mouse traps. She would pull up the spring and remove the mouse, wash off the trap, and use it again. I do not subscribe to this method. Little wooden mousetraps are damned cheap. I’m not willing to get that intimate with a mouse whose neck was just snapped.)
This morning, I was anxious to check the trap and see if I’d caught one of the furry little buggers. WTF? The landing pad on the trap had been licked completely clean of the peanut butter, and the trap had NOT gone off!
How the hell does a mouse lick the trap clean of peanut butter and not set off the trap? I’ve actually seen this happen before, and am pretty amazed since I nearly snap off two fingers every time I try to set one.
So, tonight after I got home from work I got out another trap, some Q-tips, latex gloves, paper towels, the peanut butter, and some spray cheese. Since the mouse had obviously been on the trap in the cupboard, I used great precautions to maintain good anti-mouse sanitation in the process.
I thought it might be a good idea to give the mouse the choice of cheese and peanut butter. I used the Q-tips to really press the food items nicely into the little holes on the landing pad. I set the traps, put them back in the cupboard, and loaded up the dogs and headed off to agility class.
When I got home I checked the cupboard and voila! The mousetrap with the peanut butter was again licked clean. But the cheese flavored trap contained one furry little quite dead mouse with a neck snapped like a twig.
Mouse and trap were disposed of quickly and easily, and I set another trap. I wonder if I’ll catch another one.
Edited to add: the traps were empty when I checked them first thing this morning. But after my shower, when I opened the cupboard to fix the dogs' breakfast, one of the traps had tripped, was sitting upside down, and there was a dead mouse about 10 inches away -- with no visible signs of trauma. What the hell happened there? Maybe the trap scared him to death!
Edited again to add: I heard the trap go off for the third time as I was heading back to work after lunch. I couldn't bring myself to deal with it then, so I get to deal with it when I get home from work!
One piece of advice: be careful when you check the inter webs for pictures of “mouse in a trap.”