An Unwelcome Guest

Lily has a pumpkin bucket full of candy that we keep in the cupboard. It basically gets filled twice a year -- at Halloween and Easter. If she eats a good meal she gets a treat out of her bucket. She got her bucket out after lunch yesterday, but we were surprised by how some of the candy looked. There was a Butterfinger bar that looked like small bites were taken out of each side, all the chocolate sucked off, and then put back in the wrapper. There was a Kit Kat with the sides nibbled off. This seemed strange, so we confronted Lily and asked her if she was getting into the treats when she wasn't supposed to. She vehemently denied the accusations.

As we looked further, we saw some of the little candy bars had just a tiny bit taken off the corner of the wrapper and a little bit of the chocolate got eaten. That's when we realized that Amanda's worst fear was coming true. We had a mouse.

Amanda is pretty tough when it comes to household pests. She is merciless when killing a bug or a spider. We have a snake that lives under our garage and sometimes suns itself in the yard or on the bushes next to the steps. The snake doesn't bother her one bit. However, rodents are a chink in her armor. She made it clear that I had to address this problem yesterday.

I took Lily and Noah to the local Lowe's in search for the perfect mousetrap. They were all out of the standard wood-and-spring "snappy" mousetraps that you see in Tom & Jerry cartoons. I figured a rat trap would be way too big for what had to be a pretty tiny mouse, so I had to look at the fancier traps. I ended up with one package of these. Just before bed I put a little peanut butter in each one and set them in the cupboard.

First thing this morning I checked to see if I had caught my quarry. Sure enough, there was a mouse stuck in one of them. It looked like he tried to run past it and it caught him in the middle. I gave the trap a little tap with one of the nearby BBQ utensils to make sure the mouse was dead. He didn't move, so I got out my leather gloves and grabbed the trap. His beady black eyes were all bugged out. Given where the trap was, he must have tried to scurry away from it, but he couldn't break free.

Unfortunately, when I tried to drop him in the outdoor trash can I also dropped the trap into the can. I admit to being a bit squeamish when it comes to these things. I feel like I protected my household adequately, but I still would rather not have to handle the little critter.