Metro to Mountain Journal

During a cold snap this winter, we began seeing signs that we had an unwanted visitor at our house. A mouse had invaded the pantry.

After a few days of living with the mouse, we saw that he was not going to leave on his own. We needed to take some kind of action. Amy, my wife, bought a package of traditional mousetraps.

Setting the mouse traps with bait, we waited for a mouse to be tempted to grab the tasty morsels.

Over the next few days, we saw evidence that the mouse continued to vist the pantry. He had even eaten the treats on the traps and then left. He was a smart critter. As we re-baited the traps, we talked about possibly finding a better mousetrap.

In the meantime, Jake, our dog, needed a new bag of food. After buying a 40 pound bag, we filled his food storage container in the pantry with half the bag and then left the other half of bag sitting by my desk. We store the extra food in a storage bin in the cellar.

Walking by the dog food bag one evening (yes, it was still sitting by my desk), I heard a noise. A critter was inside the bag. Quickly, I inspected the large dog food bag and saw there were no burrowing holes. The mouse had entered the bag through the hole we tore in the bag. I alerted Amy and we decided to take the dog food bag out to the street to release the critter, thus getting him out of the house.

On the street corner we laid the bag down and opened the food pouring hole as wide as possible. After shaking the bag a bit, out hopped a mouse. He took one brief look at us, turned, and hopped back toward the house as quickly as possible!

We returned to the house laughing. We placed the dog food bag back beside my desk.

A couple of days later, we returned home after a day long trip. There was another noise coming from the bag. I quickly grabbed the bag and went down the street to the corner (many houses away) and there released the mouse. He hopped away into a bushy unkept yard.

Problem solved, this time the mouse was really gone.

Returning to the house, Amy and I talked about the qualities of the dog food bag that helped us to capture the mouse. The inside was sturdy, but slick. The mouse did not seem to be able to climb up the interior sides of the bag nor chew his way through it.

A short while later that evening, another noise came from the bag. Had the mouse returned that quickly?!

Amy took the bag and marched out of the house. Returning she claimed that a big mouse ran from the bag. We concluded that we had captured two different mice and that the dog food bag bag was indeed a great mouse trap.

We thought our mouse problems were solved, then a few days later, as I was bending down in the pantry I came face to face with still another mouse. This one had been tricked by the real mouse traps. Amy came in to look at him. We then discussed what to do with the poor soul's remains. Disgusted with me for adding a "I'm a vegetarian" clause, she grabbed a plastic dog 'poop' bag and picked up the trap and mouse and threw them in the trash. I cheered her.

He was a cute mouse.

I think from now own, we will just try to catch vagabond mice in the forty pound dog food bags. It was much more fun for us and probably for the mice, too.

Happy Mousetrap trails