Mousepocalypse 2011

When Julie's cat, Finley, was with us (along with Cooper) over the Halloween weekend, he managed to find and stun a mouse in our basement. I went looking for Finley at bedtime and found him with his prize laid out beside him and not moving very much. I set it free in the backyard but assumed it probably didn't survive long.

A couple weeks later, I went into the kitchen late at night, just in time to see a mouse scurry out of Lucy's food bowl and toward the gap under the dishwasher. Lucy, meanwhile, had been sitting high up on a chair overlooking the scene, apparently unconcerned that some of her food was being enjoyed by her supposed arch nemesis!!

Not long after that disturbing scene, Vicki started finding little bits of mouse turd around the house. And that, as they say, was the last straw. This meant war!

When our friend Susan was over on Monday last week, Vicki mentioned to her that we were having mouse problems, and Susan said, "Canadian Tire has the best mouse traps known to Man. Google it and you'll see what I mean."

The next day, Vicki and I were returning from an errand and she requested a quick stop at Canadian Tire. I'd forgotten Susan's advice, but Vicki hadn't. In fact, she had Google'd it, and was now a woman on a mission. She went into the store and was back within a few minutes with two of the aforementioned traps.

That night, I went out to cycling class and then to visit a former co-worker. When I came home, around 10:00, all of the lights in the kitchen were on and Vicki was standing in the middle of the room, looking anxious. I asked her what was going on, and she directed me to the door leading to the backyard. I looked where she was motioning, and saw a dead mouse lying on the steps leading down to the back deck.

"Wow! You've caught a mouse already! That's impressive."

"Look closer," she instructed me.

I did so, and saw that there were actually two dead mice there!

"Holy crap! You've gotten two of them in the little bit of time I've been gone! Amazing!"

"Go look in the trap by the dishwasher," she further instructed me.

I did so, and there was a third dead mouse, still caught in the sprung trap!!

Later that evening, we heard a loud SNAP! and our fourth invader met his early demise. The next night, at roughly 3:00 a.m., another SNAP! rang out. I didn't hear that one (Vicki did) but not long after both of us heard the sound of something being dragged across the hardwood floor of the kitchen. Fearing that Lucy (or "Useless", as I now refer to her) had caught a paw in the trap, we rushed to see. No, she'd simply grabbed the carcass of the fifth dead mouse and was dragging it, and the trap itself, off to the basement to play with it.

I've since disposed of the bodies, but before I did I gathered the following graphic evidence of both Susan's expertise on mousetraps and my wife's proficiency with same:


Among the local mouse population, Vicki's name is now uttered in hushed tones usually reserved for the likes of Stalin and Hitler.