Mus Musculus

The Management would like to inform its readers that the author of this blog will be, until further notice, incapacitated after seeing what is sometimes referred to as the "common" house mouse in her kitchen, though she adamantly insists there is nothing common about it. It is quite a miracle that she is now able enough to insist on such things, as her first reaction to the aforementioned mouse was to fall over in a dead faint and then bleat hysterically for several hours.

Your regular content will resume as soon as the author can summon the strength to buy traps, bait them, and then remove them with the offending party captured therein. Any assistance in the removal of said traps would be desperately appreciated, as the man of the house is currently on what is often referred to as a "boys weekend" with his university companions and therefore cannot assist in this most gruesome of tasks.

Please send strength and prayers. Oh, and an exterminator.

Comments

[Lia]

Ohhh Luisa, that's the worst! Although Daniel and I lived roach-free in our last place, we too spotted a house mouse once. Well, actually only Daniel did THANK GOD, so I still like to tell myself that he was just hallucinating or something. Any way, we called this company that came and closed up every single nook, cranny and open hole that we had in our entire apartment (the exterminator himself was quite funny; I'll have to tell you that story in person sometime!). After that, we didn't see a single one, so I HIGHLY recommend this service, although I know you're moving out soon...

[amy]

oh no!!! just spend as much time as possible out of the house, and wait for the man to come back and rescue you ;)

[Honeybee]

Eeuuugh. Good luck. SATC sprang to my mind but for all the wrong reasons.

[radish]

oh no!! a mouse - ew! i am often torn because they are so cute, but in reality there is nothing cute about them. my solution for you is to get a cat - my parents' cat takes care of all the neighborhood mice, rats and birds. he's very industrious and likes to earn his keep! :)

[Pille]

Oops. Sorry to hear that. I can handle the place-mousetraps-everywhere-in-the-house bit, but then need assistance to throw the trap away - I refuse to touch it! And I don't mind small cute mice as much as big fat ones (yes, old houses in Edinburgh tend to have mice. Another reason to be happy about living in a nice new house in Estonia now:)

[deb]

Oh, no! It's the NYC curse. It never stops, does it? Do yourself a favor and skip the humane traps. We've tried them all, they never work and they're much pricier. (Also, if it gets bad enough that an exterminator comes, he will laugh at your yuppie traps, not that such a thing happened in my pristine kitchen, oh no.) I'd say you can hide out here until this too passes, but as you can probably guess, I too am typing this while standing on the sofa.

[Kalyn]

I really hate mice. Last year I got one in my classroom, which amused the children to no end and totally freaked me out. My condolences.

[ann]

I would suggest cuteifying him. That helped me deal with my mouse problem in the old apartment. I called him Mr. Mouseypants. For some reason it helped me deal with his existence better. Also note that to this day I still refuse to even countenance the suggestion the boy made that there might be a whole Familie Maushosen. Ignorance, and cuteness, is bliss.

As George Costanza once said, "Serenity Now!" Good luck Luisa!

[Mary]

Oh no!!! It's true, the humane traps don't work. Here's what you need to do: put a bucket of water on the floor with a piece of wood leading up to it (gang plank style), put some sunflower seeds in the water (they float). Wait for mouse to drown itself. Final step: throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Gigi]

Please please please consider using humane traps until you can get the offenders' entry points closed up.

We got one from PETA's website (it's clear green plastic with air holes and is called the Mouse House or something like that) and it doesn't involve dealing with a dead mouse or getting up close and personal with it during the release phase. You load it up with a saltine cracker and, after mousey goes in, you remove the barrier to the cracker and he eats his way out. No fuss, no muss.

[shauna]

Ack! Poor dear. I wish there was something I could do from here. (And I wish I could say that the phrase "to fall over in a dead faint and then bleat hysterically for several hours" didn't make me laugh, because that seems cruel in this situation. But it did.

My brother once tried to trap a mouse in the humane trap and then use a teeny-tiny syringe (provided by his veterinarian wife) to put the little animal to sleep, instantly. As you can imagine, this was a disaster.

[Zarah Maria]

One word: EEEEEIIIIIUUUUUUWWW!! And then: way to go on writing that post - funny!:) Hope it disappears fast, that mouse...

[Laura]

My best advice as a cook and mouse survivor, is to do the following when trying to dispose of the mouse: grab your broom and dust pan, and a kitchen towel or something similar that you wouldn't mind parting with. The hardest part is looking at it, so toss the kitchen towel over the mouse and trap, and using your broom, gently slide the deceased onto the dustpan. Toss it into your garbage and dispose of immediately. That has always worked for me.

Good Luck!

[Bobbie]

There's a kind of trap that's plastic, that you can reuse, if you can bear to squeeze it open to drop the dead mouse out into the trash. If you figure the only way to dispose of your catch is trap-and-all, just get the cheaper wood-and-wire ones.

As for bait, cheese dominates the popular imagination, but many years of experience here favor peanut butter.

Good luck!

[Christine]

Man, I had mice. The humane traps didn't work for us. They were too smart for the wire traps (or at least the breeding ones were, we would catch a few babes). We ended up hiring an exterminator. You're out of there soon right? I would go with the ol' wire ones for now. Blech, or if you don't mind tamer rodents, you could get a pet rat. The smell stops the mice from breeding.

[Lydia]

I have often joked (though I am not sure it IS a joke) that if I see a mouse inside my house again, I will sell the house and move out, not necessarily in that order. I absolutely hate mice and, what's worse, I live in a place where the mice have acres of woods and fields to play in. Why oh why do they insist on coming into the house???? You have all of my sympathy, Luisa, but I'm afraid you can't count on my help!

[Susan from Food Blogga]

The only advice I have is to call a good exterminator. That was the way we got rid of mice in our house when we lived in NC. That and removing the bird seed bag from the porch!

[Tana]

Do what we did. Buy the Hav-a-Heart traps, bait them with peanut butter, catch the mice, and put them in the freezer. The next day, you can dispose of your mouse-sicle with a minimum of inconvenience.

But we live in the country: your mileage may vary.

Good luck!

[Jill]

I feel your pain. I am very afraid of mice. Yes, I know they are more afraid of me. Yes I know they are tiny, defenseless creatures. Guess what, I don't care! Try this idea (kudos to my mother on this one) Place the set mousetrap in a small paper bag, then when you catch one, you don't have to look at it as you pick it up. EWWWWWWW!!!!

[Randi]

We;ve used the traps that Bobbie mentioned above except the last two were only half dead. I had to finish the deed and it was horrible. I actually cried.

[Jessika]

Oh. Well, not to be a perpetual optimist but it beats rats, and bugs of any kind. If you are sure that it is mice that it.
Hope you can get it sorted and back to cooking. Although, with it being summer you might not be that keen on cooking after all. We're having a cool summer here (blessedly cool), so I'm in the midst of baking stuff I've had on my to-do-list for a long time.

[Maggi]

Well, we live in the burbs, but on a sizeable plot. Unfortunately, mice are a reality once the weather turns cold so the traps come out.

The best bait we have found thus far has been POLENTA! How did we come tot his conclusion? It's the one thing the mice kept gravitating to in my pantry. Guess what? it works everytime!

[Julie]

We had a terrible mouse problem when we moved into our house. They were even nesting in the stove.

Mouse traps didn't seem to be at all effective but the problem disappeared when we pulled out all the old cabinets (under and behind which the mice must have nested), got rid of the stove, and then got a cat. I haven't seen a mouse or evidence of a mouse in the last two years. Thank goodness.

[LyB]

Find a friend, leave the house, let your boyfriend deal with the problem. Feminism be damned!

[Sam Iam]

If you see one mouse, there are probably more than one. Set at least five cheap wire traps with cheese and peanut butter against walls where they run.They tend to stay in a small area, so move them around to different walls and rooms over several days. Good luck!

[lindy]

Why the mouse picked my apartment of all those in our little townhouse-like row, I do not know, particularly as I am the only tenant allowed cats (due to long tenancy and "grandfathering" type lease), and I have 2.

My cats, indoor beasts, having never encountered anybody but a person, or another cat before, naturally assumed that the mouse was some kind of playmate. They made no attempt to kill it, but did corner it in my bathtub in the middle of the night, making a fair commontion in doing so.Excessive meowing brought me out to check.

I pretty much screamed like a cartoon lady, and got up on a chair. Eventually I got down again, tricked the cornered mouse into a dust pan, dumped him into a shoebox with a lid, and took him outside. I released him on the grassy hill behind the building, figuring that he wouldn't pick my place twice, having seen Archie and Anyanka. He didn't, and I guess he notified his friends-it's been 2 years.

I couldn't have dealt with doing him in, I'm afraid, though I guess I wasn't being a good neighbor.There is no advice in this tale, only sympathy.

[Jennifer Hess]

Late to the table here, but have you tried those ultrasonic plug-in thingies? We've had very good luck with them. A 3-pack cost under $20 at Home Depot.

[Lisa (Homesick Texan)]

I, too, am late to the party (though it's not really a party anyone should ever desire to attend!) I've been there, and it's awful--the worst thing ever. I had my super plug every single hole in my apartment (he tore apart the kitchen to get behind the cabinets.) I also dashed mint essential oil all over my floor (they're supposed to hate that) and stuffed Bounce sheets (they're also supposed to hate those) behind the small appliances on my counter. I bought the plug-in thingy, and turned on my oven for two hours in the summer (because that's where they lived). And they finally left. But why mice come into our apartments in the summer makes no sense! How do you feel about cats?

[Leland]

A coworker of mine who lives in the West Village recently had a huge RAT, so it could be worse!

We've had many mice here, and I've hated them all. Sticky traps work well as long as you have someone around to dispose of them. Good luck!

[bryan]

So true Leland. A rat got into our apartment through an open back door. I knew there was something in the house because the cats kept looking intently at the kitchen cabinets - but I saw nothing. Until...

I saw the poop. Right by the sink. And I smelled the smell... if you've ever worked in a large restaurant, you probably know the smell I write of. And I opened the cabinet where we keep our glasses and there it was. Cowering, or mousering, if you prefer. I took two steps back. Slammed the cabinet shut. And called the BF. I demanded he home from work early to fix this. Oh, how he laughed. He insisted it was just a little mouse and I would be fine. I said, no sir, it's not a mouse, it has a black tail and a ratty face with ratty whiskers and it looked at me quite rattily.

Long story short, glue traps are just mean. I felt like a murderer. If I had to do it again, please, god, no, I would go with the humane trap.

Good luck.

[Aunt Carol]

Luisa Dear-
Hope your problem is solved by now. If not, we can talk about shipping Buster to you. At 25 pounds, he'd take care of your mouse, and then some.

It's the why and how of cats allowing themselves to be domesticated. Check last week's NYT.