Fighting the vermin!!

Keeping ahead of the rodent population is a never ending battle and when you live in an old house, they are going to get inside, no matter how hard you try to keep them out. Each fall they move in with their little suitcases and set up housekeeping. I fought them in the kitchen, setting traps under the sink but when I found them in my kitchen drawers, I waged an all out assault and finally figured out how they were getting there. It wasn't easy but I did get that route blocked off so I can once more put the bread in the bread drawer.

We hear them scurrying around in the ceiling and they have gotten into the upstairs bathroom so Zoe hangs out there a lot and has captured a few. The problem is, she only wants them to play with and does not know or refuses to give them the death bite. After all, then they quit moving and aren't any fun, she even had the audacity one evening to bring a much alive mouse into the house with her.  One night we woke up to the sound of her playing with one in the bedroom and Bruce chased her down one evening when she carried one downstairs.

When I was laid up with my leg and sleeping on the couch, I woke up one night to find Zoe and Clyde had a mouse cornered in the living room. By the time I got to my feet, she had grabbed it and ran into the kitchen where she promptly lost it. She sniffed around the pantry door so I opened it but there was no mouse, then she looked up at me with a distressed, "MEOW!" which I translated into, "What did you do with it??"

One day this week I pulled out a pair of old tennis shoes that sit by the dryer to find they each had a pile of corn inside and when I dumped it out, each shoe had been chewed on!! Some little enterprising mouse was living under the dryer, where no cat could go, and living off the corn that scattered from the buckets as they are hauled to the basement corn stove. The buggers!!

You just feel like they are giving you the finger.

So I got out the traps and set one on each side of the dryer, I got really excited when one went off within the hour but it turned out to be a false alarm. It took a couple of days but yesterday morning I couldn't sleep and got up about 5 AM and stumbled downstairs to find Clyde guarding a very dead mouse, still in the trap, that he had managed to drag into the living room, thank you very much. He had desecrated the body but I will spare you the gory details, I flushed the rest of the carcass, much to his dismay. He had plans for that mouse.

If Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I would say a mouse free house but then I would be depriving the cats of some entertainment.