Ah, Sunday...a day of *ahem* rest.

[AllieBaba]

Today I was supposed to travel about a hundred miles to participate in a picnic and meeting of my riding club.

Sadly, it's been spitting snow, raining, it's windy and nasty. So guess what I'm doing? I'm staying home.

And guess what I'm doing with my day?

Cleaning my oven. Know why? Because a flipping mouse, avoiding the traps I have set inside the drawer of the stove and under the sink(I had an errant field mouse that was hanging out under my sink and the drawer, and my dog, well, she was busy sleeping instead of doing her job) well anyway, I caught one mouse, but apparently there's another...and it is completely avoiding the traps and has decided to go directly into my stove.

I found out when I decided to cook a roast last Friday. I turned on the oven to preheat, and pulled out the broiler pan and noticed the tin foil was all shredded. At about the time I thought, crap, a MOUSE has been chewing the foil the heat created a huge cloud of, you've got it, mouse piss scented air freshener which hit me in the face when I opened the oven door.

Yes it was lovely.

No time to clean the oven last week, with company, a birthday party, and then work.

So today I'm cleaning my oven (oh joy) and oiling our boots for the winter.

The good news is the oven cleaning is going quite well, though I know the cleaner is eating holes in my lungs. I heated the oven,sprayed it, let it sit, and cleaned the worst of it out. Then a second spray and when I clean out the rest I should be able to cook non-mouse tasting food again. After the last roast disaster, when I poked a hole in the bottom of the pan and got 3 hours of drippings all over the bottom of the stove, it's well over due.

The good news? I'm not driving anywhere, so I can sip toddies as I'm working.

The kids are a little stir crazy, though. It's too nasty to go outside to play. We'll be having a tea party later, methinks.

 

[Mr. H.]

Have you tried peanut butter in those mousetraps?

With winter coming it'll only get worse.

 

[Si modo]

Dcon. They eat it then internally bleed out. Better living through chemistry.

Snow? At the beginning of October? You must live in the mountains somewhere, I imagine.

 

[asaratis]

Have you tried peanut butter in those mousetraps?

With winter coming it'll only get worse.

The peanut butter trick worked well for me. Raw steak works, too.

Dcon. They eat it then internally bleed out. Better living through chemistry.

Snow? At the beginning of October? You must live in the mountains somewhere, I imagine.

Is that the one that makes them crave water? I've used something like that once, but had to make sure we left no sources of water for them so they'd go elsewhere and not die in the house...and ya don't have to clean the traps.

 

[chanel]

I've heard the peanut butter trick does wonders for lonely pet owner's sex lives as well.

 

[Si modo]

....

Dcon. They eat it then internally bleed out. Better living through chemistry.

Snow? At the beginning of October? You must live in the mountains somewhere, I imagine.

Is that the one that makes them crave water? I've used something like that once, but had to make sure we left no sources of water for them so they'd go elsewhere and not die in the house...and ya don't have to clean the traps.

I don't know if it's a side effect or not of the Dcon I'm thinking of (it's the Dcon mouse bait that comes in a wedge shaped box about 3" long and 2.5" wide and you just tear off a tab to expose the pellets they eat). The pellets contain warfarin which is an anit-coagulant. Whether they have water available or not, their blood will not clot. They can even bleed out from a minor bruise.

The first (and last) time I had a mouse in my house (old house and in the winter), I tried humane traps - peanut butter - and the suckers got wise to it. I then tried the snap traps (yuck) with peanut butter, and they were wise to those. In the meantime, they are breeding, so I'm getting a mouse problem with which I was NOT pleased.

Then I got the chemical weapons, and not a single mouse by the end of the week. I highly recommend it. I'll never use a trap again.

 

[asaratis]

I've heard the peanut butter trick does wonders for lonely pet owner's sex lives as well.

Yep! Seems like I heard a story once where this voluptuous woman was bouncing down the basement stairs naked, clutching a rather large jar of peanut butter, being followed by her rather large Irish setter, thinking she was alone in the spacious home, saying, "Come on, big boy" as she bounded into the basement only to find that her husband had arranged a surprise party for her in the basement.

 

[Xenophon]

I sat around and watched football all day.

 

[AllieBaba]

Have you tried peanut butter in those mousetraps?

With winter coming it'll only get worse.

Oh absolutely. My babysitter, who takes care of a vacation rental, is a mouse catcher pro. She uses peanut butter and 2 mousetraps at each place mice frequent.

I spent a night setting traps, and was a miserable failure. I used ranch dip and bent the traps because I couldn't set them otherwise. Needless to say, the mousies ate the bait, and those bastards wouldn't go off if you dropped a boulder on them.

 

[Luissa]

we had bad winds today in eastern washington, even shutting down I90 which I think might still be closed, along with some farm roads. We lost power at work but still had to stay.

 

[AllieBaba]

Poison works great. If I had many mousies, I'd use it. Despite the fact I have kids, dogs & cats...I could find a place to put it where the others wouldn't get to it. But since I don't have families of house mice, only the occasional field mouse, I'm okay with using traps and my useless Parson Russell Terrorist, as we call her.