Augh! It's an Invasion!

The first wave has arrived! I'm being invaded! Sorta...

Last night, I went into my kitchen for a late night snack, and after I turn on the light, what is it I see? A mouse! It quickly scampered away under the stove top burner. That's right. It went INTO my stove. I immediately turned off the light and went into my room and shut the door. Seriously, the idea of some sort of creature that I don't approve of roaming my apartment freaks me out. I think it all goes back to when I was a kid...and our kitchen had huge cockroaches. Like, these things were about 2 inches long, and had these long antennae. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. At night, we would turn on the kitchen light and there would be like 4 roaches in the middle of the floor or by the sink that would then scamper away. I can't believe my sister, who slept on the ground floor, could live like that. In addition, one time when I was home from break, I could hear a mouse scampering around trapped in some sort of paper bag...it was very hard to sleep that night.

So, this morning, I went to Giant Eagle and picked up every possible mouse deterrent device I could find. This included: your classic mousetrap, a glue trap, and poison pellets. I also have a pretty good idea of where they are coming from. There appears to be a fairly large hole behind my stove where the gas comes in. I guess my landlord decided they didn't need to seal that up. I'm going to have a word with them tomorrow.

With my supplies in hand, the first thing I did was check underneath the burners to make sure the mouse wasn't still there. I came prepared with a box and gloves in case it was, in which case I would just pick it up and put it in the box and throw it outside somewhere. But alas, it would not be quite so easy.

Next, I lay the two glue traps I had on the two sides of the stove, so if it did come out of it's hiding hole, it would have to get past those first, unless it climbed up the side of the stove. Next, I lay two mouse traps in front of the glue traps. Each laced with peanut butter, which was a recommendation from my dad, a seasoned veteran of mice eliminations. So, if they somehow jumped over the glue traps, they would land directly onto the mouse trap. Muahahaha! Finally, I put some poison pellets in my pantry on the other side of the kitchen just in case.

Several hours later, I'm in my room when I hear this sort of scraping sound. At first I thought it was someone doing something outside, but then it continued. Aha! A mouse must have gotten caught in the glue trap! It must be trying to somehow drag it's way to safety. This was in fact what had happened. At that point I thought to myself how funny it would be if it kept going in the same direction and gotten caught by the mousetrap as well. I'm sick that way.

So, I watched it drag itself a couple of inches. Stop. Drag itself a couple more inches. Stop. And I wondered what I was supposed to do with it now. I looked up glue traps on wikipedia and saw that some people used these as a way to trap the mouse without killing it and they would let it go free into the wild. However, I wasn't about to touch the thing. So, I hit up my dad and he told me to just throw it in the trash. So I ended up taking a broom to collect the glue trap, which at this point had managed to make it's way almost to safety at the back of the stove. Added bonus: the glue trap stuck to the broom, so I didn't even have to come close to touching the mouse. And then I flung it into the garbage and immediately took the garbage out even though it was mostly empty, cause I didn't want to risk it getting loose and making its way to freedom.

So, 1 mouse down, and hopefully no more to go.