Fishfamily, 2; Rodents, ??

We live on the edge of a forest and lake, which a lot of times is a really great thing; it's peaceful, it's quiet (at least, quiet for a townhouse development), a lot of our neighbors are wildlife (and that doesn't count my new young, hip neighbors and their outdoor hot tub parties when the wind-chill hits 20), and when it snows, this is our view out of our slider to our deck:

Purty, isn't it? If I had walked out to the edge of the deck and looked down, you would have seen the lake, but I had my slippers on and was not interested in getting snow all over them, so I stayed in.  When there is foliage on the trees, you can't see the lake, but it looks lovely all frozen and snow covered in the winter months.  So, really pretty, and a nice place to live, for the burbs.

But!  Every time it gets cold, we get visitors in our house of the four-footed variety, mostly mice, but we did have one rat a couple of years ago.  The rat creeped me out horribly, and we had some rat traps that weren't working.  We even had a dog, but he didn't seem bothered by the damn rat, and I didn't know what to do with it.  My father kept telling me to bait a trap with raw bacon and it would take care of the problem; I thought he was crazy and so continued to try the peanut butter bait.  It took him two weeks of telling me to use the bacon before we broke down and tried it; we baited the trap and went up to bed.  Not 30 minutes later we heard a commotion down in the kitchen - problem solved.  So if you ever have a rat problem, try raw bacon in a standard snap trap - works like gold.

Anyway, last week I noticed the telltale signs of a new visitor to our abode.  We keep our food in a lower cabinet, and due to previous years' run ins with the things, I keep everything that isn't in cans or jars in plastic tupperware Modular Mates.  This has served us in good stead, as these are real thick plastic that can't be eaten through easily.  A few nights ago as I sat here blogging I heard what sounded like something eating plastic -- sure enough, I found teeth marks around the tops of some of my containers as well as on the labels to the peanut butter jars (I guess paper is a reasonable substitute for food), and mouse droppings in the cabinet.  This creeps me out, so I pulled everything out, scoured it all in bleach, and pulled out an old trap and set it.  I like these traps because they are easy to bait and set, there is no poison involved, and the less I have to LOOK at the dead rodent, the better, much less touch it.  Again, within 30 minutes, success.  I opened the cabinet, and saw what looked like a huge mouse with a super long pointy tail, shrieked, slammed the cabinet, and retrieved BigDaddyFish, who I married in part so I wouldn't have to deal with dead rodents in my cabinets.  We frankly think the thing looked like a mouse/rat hybrid, but since this isn't very likely, it was probably a small rat.  Shudder.

I set another trap, my last one, locked the cabinet and left a sign to the kids not to open the cabinet, put the baby gate up in the kitchen doorway (is it really called a doorway if there's no door?), and went to bed.  Morning brought more success, this time an obvious mouse.  But now we were out of traps.

I went to the hair salon to get a "hip" new haircut (more about that later) and then to the grocery store for more traps.  They were out.  Then hit the Home Despot for some - they didn't have them, either.  So I bought a couple of other traps, one being an electronic one that zaps them dead.  Haven't tried that one yet, as you have to empty the trap and rebait it and frankly, that's just more contact with the damn things than either BDF or I would like.  So I may just order some more of my favorite traps that work like a dream and use those.

This would be so much easier if I wasn't highly allergic to cats.  But since I like breathing, what are your favorite ways to rid your household of unwanted four-footed visitors without poison and with minimal human/carcass interaction?

Comments

[bzymom13]

You could come & borrow my husband...
We get mice in the winter too & he buys LIVE traps and.lets.the.mice.go! No kidding.

I wonder how many are coming right back in, only to be caught & let out into the woods, and coming back in & being caught and....well, you get the idea (sigh).

*(he is very allergic to cats too)*

Last night it was a little tiny cute one (I can say that right??) and I think he was seriously considering keeping the dang thing!! He looked at it for waaaaay too long and kept talking about how little & cute it was!?

Ahhh....gotta love my BIG, TOUGH, manly husband! :)

[Redneck Mommy]

I can't escape my mouse. It follows me everywhere. And I'm too big of a pansy to kill the little bastard, but don't get me wrong...I want it DEAD!!!!!

So, I am waiting for the hubs to come home, and kill the little critters for me. Until then, I live bleaching everything every damn day, and try to ignore the fact that Stuart Little likes my home.

I wish I had a cat.