Revenge of the Rodents

About a week ago I began to see rodent evidence in the garage. Yep, poop pellets. There were just a few after several days, so I figured we had a mouse or two, and we'd have to set some traps. As I notified Husband of the rodent situation, he was very unhappy. I wasn't thrilled either. Rodents inside of any dwelling is gross.

So the other day, Husband and his friend returned from running an errand and noticed that a small rodent had been crushed, flattened, and pancaked by the garage door. What are the odds of that? Insanely slow garage door closing, amazingly fast tiny mouse trying to make it outside Indiana Jones style, and the mouse was too slow. So Husband took care of his flattened quarry and we decided that we definitely needed to do something.

Before I could set traps, we had another encounter with a member of the rodent family. On a lazy Saturday morning, I was laying in the bed watching TV when the dogs came in from outside. Argus sat down in the doorway of the bedroom with his back to me and was watching something in the living room. He was trembling. He would turn around and look at me, then turn and look at whatever was bothering him. He was tattling. So, I got up to check on what was going on. He immediatly went over to the coffee table, where Criket was laying on her pillow underneath. She began to growl as he got close, which is a sure-fire sign that she was doing something she wasn't supposed to.

So I checked her out. And she had a mouse. Actually, it was neatly tucked under the edge of the pillow - you know, for safekeeping. When I went to pick it up with a wad of paper towels, I realized that it was not only sopping wet with slobber, it was also headless. She'd obviously been playing with this thing for quite some time before she brought it in the house, and she'd been having a really good time. After I took it away and cleaned up the mouse goo on the pillow and carpet, she pouted and looked all sad until she realized that there might be another where that one came from. She went back out in the yard and enjoyed hunting mice for a while.

Today I decided it was time to clean the mouse poop from the garage. The poop pellets had multiplied exponentially and I couldn't take it anymore. Not only did they poop all around the perimeter of the entire garage, every shred of grass that was on the lawn mower was scattered all over the place, but they had chewed multiple holes in some bags of old dirt dumped from flower pots that was awaiting trash day. Thankfully they were not able to get into the trash, as it was stored safely away in containers.

Mice are so gross. I will admit that I actually took a can of disinfecting spray and went around the areas I knew the little critters had been. It just gives me the heebie-jeebies to think about them crawling with their germs all over the stuff I would be touching. I won't even get started on Criket's mouth. On the upside, they do not seem to have penetrated the attic and definitely not the rest of the house. If they do get in the house with two Jack Russells, it will not be pretty. For anybody.

So now there are traps set in the garage in the areas that seem to be high-traffic. I opted for the standard mouse trap, not the nasty glue or bait kind. I hate having to actually kill the little fuzzy things (I just wish they'd stay away from my house), and I don't think it should be slow and painful. It makes me feel better knowing they never saw what was coming. And it should be a lesson to their friends. "This woman is crazy, and she hates mice in her house."