Ok, I’ve not formally announced on here yet, but we have a new house. We’ve been living there for a few days now, the vast majority of our stuff has been moved over from the apartment. It is good. We’re happy. I’m lucky to have had James & Scott to come help me in addition to family when we did the big furniture move on Saturday (3rd).
Warning: The following post contains a detailed account of suffering and death on the part of helpless little animals that many people (myself included) would likely rather not read. You have been warned.
The night before the big move (Friday the 2nd, Penny’s and my 6th anniversary), we saw a mouse. Can there be a greater proof of home ownership than an immediate attack by vermin? 
Now, I’ve seen mice before. I’ve helped exterminate mice before. But I have NEVER seen a mouse so tiny and cute and adorable as the one we discovered last Friday night. I felt bad about looking for implements of furry little death, but it wouldn’t do to let the critter have free run of the place. Nor could I simply catch and release – he’d just come back inside the same way he managed to get inside in the first place.
Saturday, we sealed up the most likely point of access (clothes dryer vent wasn’t sealed very well) and I laid out the first of the traps – some standard issue poison. Now the poison promised results within a few days. And frankly, with just one adorable little mouse, I didn’t mind it taking a while before it killed him.
Shortly thereafter, as I was helping unpack and move some furniture around the house, I lifted the case to our Gamecube and saw two mice together at the same time. This added a bit to my urgency and I decided to go back to the emporium of death and acquire something a bit faster.
When I got to the store, they were completely out of traditional spring traps. The only things they had were more poison and glue traps. I’d heard that glue traps were amazingly effective so I took a look at the box. The traps claimed to have some anesthetic in them as well… so I figured I’d give them a go. After all, it was only two mice. Two adorable little mice.
I set one of the traps next to the refrigerator and went in to watch the Robin Hood series premiere. After the show was over, Penny went in to get something to eat and discovered that a mouse had already been caught. I took a look and he did seem to be quite sedated. I didn’t pick it up yet because I was kind of squeamish (he was still alive, after all), and because I really had nowhere to dispose of him. A few hours later, as I got a drink of water before bed, I discovered that the mouse was still alive. I got over my nerves and grabbed a plastic bag to wrap him in. He tried to struggle free as I picked up the trap…
The following morning, I set another trap behind the television where we’d seen the two mice together. By Sunday afternoon, the second mouse had been caught. He was a bit tougher than the first one and squeaked occasionally. After an hour or two, I decided that he wasn’t going to go to sleep like the first mouse so I wrapped him in plastic and removed him from the house as well.
The nezumi defeated, we resumed our lives free of the fear that something would join us in bed or crawl up legs or simply infect the house with some exotic disease. It was peaceful, the suffering of the two little mice was almost forgotten.
Then on Monday night, Penny thought she saw a 3rd mouse. Corner of her eye sort of thing. But it was late, she was tired and had been looking for mice for two days straight already. I dismissed it. Eventually, she did too.
Then yesterday she saw the mouse again while I was at work. I set out the remaining glue traps – one by the unpacked computers in my office and one next to the poison in our bathroom. I placed a little cookies in the poison tray. All that evening, I never saw the mouse. Then, at ~11pm as I washed my face before bed, I saw that the trap in our bathroom had worked.
The mouse had gone around the trap, into the poison, grabbed the cookie, and tried to escape across the glue. Naturally, he got caught.
With his little cookie.
When I saw him, he was still actively struggling to get free.
But I was tired and I had nowhere to dispose of the body (we’d been left a present of a completely full trash can by the former owner), so I left the mouse to calm down a bit as I had the other two. I forgot about him and went to bed.
At 2am, I woke up to his cries of distress. I don’t think the anesthetic really worked for him.
This morning, I was a bit late getting out the door, so I didn’t take the time to do something about him as I ran out to work.
At 3pm this afternoon, Penny informed me that the mouse was still alive. Still squeaking. Still struggling to get out of the trap.
Still in possession of his little cookie.
I am never using glue traps again. They may be amazingly effective… but… I like to think that I’m a bit too human to voluntarily do something like that to another mammal again.
Maybe live traps aren’t such a bad idea after all. I can always take them to the park before letting them go.