The Adventures of Mouse Hunting

Before Baltimore, I had only seen rodents in pet stores or on TV. Wow has that changed. Let me tell you a little story about my life and how much I hate rodents.

Well, it all started when I moved to Baltimore in August. My boyfriend and I headed up to Baltimore from Texas  (where we did not live in a big city) and we had no idea where we were going to live. We had a U-haul trailer full of stuff and 3 days to find somewhere to live. We found an apt. the first day of searching and it seemed nice. We moved in and had no problems and life was grand…….for two weeks.

Then we had a little friend show up. Yep, he was a mouse and one day while I was at school my boyfriend saw him in our kitchen running on the counter top. Since my boyfriend knew I would FREAK OUT, he went to get traps and set them out. We went to dinner that night so we didn’t have to deal with the mouse and  because I refused to get within 3 feet of our kitchen (which is hard to do because our apt. isn’t that big) So the next morning the mouse was in the trap and all anxiety was gone… until later than afternoon.

I came home from school and had a craving for ice cream. I set my backpack down and headed for a kitchen, only to see a mouse hanging out on top of the stove, I panicked, screamed, and was frozen in my tracks. I was scared, and kind of mad because I really wanted that darn ice cream but I was too scared to be in the kitchen.  So the best idea was to run into my bedroom, stuff a towel under the door and hope the mouse didn’t climb down from the counter top to come and get me in my room.

Now, I realize most people think this is silly because mice are more scared of humans than humans should be of mice, but next time you see a mouse in your house, I bet you will be scared too.  Anyway, I ended up waiting 3 hours for my boyfriend to rescue me from my bedroom. We set more traps and caught a mouse that night, too. The traps we were using were the no show kind, the mouse goes inside and gets stuck and dies. The trap says the mouse is caught so its not gross or anything. After 4 days of catching mice in the kitchen, I was beginning to think that the traps were lying to us. I refused to ever pick one up so I thought maybe my boyfriend just thought there was a mouse in them but there wasn’t.  Finally we figured out that there was a HUGE HOLE behind our oven where the mice were just walking  in to our house from the wall. So a whole mouse family was coming in one by one and getting caught each night. It was not just one mouse like I thought it was.  So we went to Wal-Mart and bought steel wool and expandable foam.  We filled that hole and life was good again….. for three weeks.

Then one day I was home, by myself and I saw something run across the floor in the kitchen. I seriously started crying because I knew what it was and I was not mentally ready for this ridiculousness again. Our efforts had failed and the mice were back.

We set traps again and baited them with peanut butter, (a mouse favorite), and hoped for the best. Well, the next morning, we had nothing. No dead mouse. Disappointing!!!!! The worst thing about our mouse is that he liked the kitchen. So I felt like I couldn’t cook because I didn’t know if he would be around, and he loved pooping on our clean dish drying rack!!! Jerk!!! We had to disinfect our dishes and drying rack every day and it was taking a toll on me. Finally, we decided that this mouse was too smart. After 3 days of hanging out in our kitchen, he still wasn’t dead. Sometimes, while we were home we would hear him chewing on something or running around. But he was too smart  to go for the traps.

Finally, we took everything off of our counter tops, and put a total of 10 traps out on the counter. We put the old fashion wooden ones, we put the no show with peanut butter, and we put the sneakiest of all…. the sticky pad.  So the next morning, our mouse friend had finally fallen for the sticky pad. Now, this is nasty because he is still alive and I felt bad for him, because he looked cute. But I had to remind myself that he was causing me anxiety and a small fortune in eating out and mouse traps. Luckily, I have a wonderful boyfriend who is beginning to build up a tolerance to mice.  My boyfriend got rid of him, and the friend he brought along that was in a different trap. This went on for 2 more days, catching mice in the morning, until we could go to ACE hardware and get something to cover the tunnel the mice had made in the foam and steel wool we patched the hole with earlier. We bought a sheet of a metal and covered the hole so no more mice could come in. So far they haven’t been back in the kitchen, but I am not going to hold my breath. I know that where there is a will, there is a way.  So far, the count is 8 dead mice from our kitchen. At first I tried to convince myself they were cute and give them names like Minnie and Mickey, but that didn’t work. I still hate mice and their pooping habits all over my counters.

I don’t know if one day there will be no mice or if I will just get used to them coming inside or being in the alley outside. We shall see. Good luck to all of my fellow Baltimore citizens and your rodent problems. If you have any tips on making sure they don’t come back let me know! That is all for now and I hope this is the first and final chapter in THE ADVENTURES OF MOUSE HUNTING!