Of Mice and Cap'n

The problem wasn't that I saw a mouse.
It's that my wife saw a mouse.

It's that time of the year.
It is getting cooler.
The trees are hinting to turn.
Perhaps a little bit early since there aren't any sunspots? (link to that)

But the wife saw a mouse.
That's bad.
Luckily it was near the garage.
That's good.
I quickly dispatched the broom to take care of that little sh*t.

I triumphantly came back into the home.
"That mouse will never bother you again."
"What did you do?"
Did I tell her that I smacked that sucker in the noggin and left him in the alley as a warning to the other mice that death is coming? That I left him to be picked apart by hungry birds or flattened by a passing car?
"That mouse will never bother you again," and I left the room.

A few days passed. Didn't think about it.
I always knew I had a mouse 'situation.'
The neighbor feeds the birds.
This is next to my garage.
If I were a mouse? Hell, I'd hang out in my garage too. Easy meal just outside.
Sneak out, eat my fill, run back inside. Get fat. Raise some kids, you know?
And once, I left some grass seed out in that garage.
Not long afterward I found out that grass seed in the garage was akin to opening a Denney's next to a 4am bar.
Very bad idea.

But then I saw one near the house.
In the back, by the back door.
Was I pissed.

Actually, I saw it run into a section of rain gutter that I had left under the house. I grabbed it, then I remembered how sharp it was.
...And realizing after I had picked it up, that he's going to shoot out of there
...and maybe he had a whole family in there?
Yuck.
I hadn't thought this out at all.
In retrospect, I should have flung that little fugger like a canon.
But I wasn't thinking, and he escaped when it evened out.

My first thought was, "That little, ungrateful sh*t! He's got the land of milk and honey - (alright it's just birdseed and old toast) - in my garage! Now they want MORE?"
This is WAR.

They're on the offensive. They're getting literally too close to home now. Action. Decisive, over the top over-reaction action must be made. An insane gesture must be witnessed. Not just a statement to the mice - but to my neighbors as well!
(Somehow there's an analogy to 9/11 - War on Terror in this, but I'll leave that to better, more intelligent folks who want to read into that. I'm not smart enough to pull that one out.)

A trip to the big box store... Home Cheap-o or Nards, which ever one my blind rage got me to first. The difference is which Asian country they buy their stuff from. Cheap-o is China, and Nards is Korea. They even make their American Flags over there. Oh, I guess one is Orange, the other is Green?

I got stuck in the hardware store for, well, the wife called to tell me I had been gone half the day. I looked into my cart and saw 82 projects, and not one single mouse trap.

Damn it.

I finally found the 'pest' control area. There's an isle of these devices. It seems the patent office is still busy with the 'better mouse trap'... and Nards/Home Cheap-o has a shipping route to their warehouse door. There were three other dudes investgating the WMD's as well. I'm guessing this mouse infestation isn't an isolated event then?

An Asian fellow was asking me about the electronic devices.
"Do this work?"
Rather than retorting back with some dumb ass snappy remark about me not wearing a jumpsuit - I realized he's in the same infestation as me.
We're Allies in this mess.
Best not piss him off too much.
I told him you'd only have high pitched electric bills, with mice in your house. Look, you'd have to prove to me that this worked. With mice in a cage, and turning it on, and them freaking out. And even then I'd be skeptical. What if they were just trained to do that?

He then said he had skunks.
Hell... I guess my war wasn't that bad after all. Good luck with that, man.

One gentleman seemed convinced that the 'live' route was the way to go. Must be a PETA non-penis American. I'm kind of against the 'live mouse' idea. I'm not collecting these disease and mite infested rodents for a science lab. I'm not going to keep it as a pet. And what if I do catch one? What am I going to do? Take a live mouse on a trip - a nice ride in my car - out to the country and let him free? Go frolic in nature, Mickey... and look out for the Hawks.
Hell no! I'm going to smack the living sh*t out of him! Besides, think of the gas money in that adventure! At that moment I realized I'm not a humanitarian, and never will be. One of the dudes pointed me over to look at the catch and kill options and the other, deadlier bait traps.
(FYI - I will not be renewing my WWF membership this year.)

Now, I'm a little conflicted with the food option. I feed them, and they die. Awesome. Where do they die? At least with a trap - they're right there. I am going to have to clean up, but at least I know where their corpses are. If they ARE in my house, and I bait them with the poison - and they go back into the house or the rafters or something -- jebus that's going to smell up the joint. But I don't really want to bait them next to the house, because if they AREN'T in the house, maybe now they'll think there's food there, and what a groovy place to hang out.

God I'm over thinking this.

Three hours later I shake hands with the fellows, and walk out with a bucket of the poison bricks, a little 'live' catcher that I'll put some peanut butter in, and some glue traps for 'in' the house.

I also bought some of that awesome 'fill-a-crack' can foam stuff. I'm going to put that all over the garage. The 60's are over, you hippie mouse assh*les!!

Yeah, that's the other thing. I've decided that all my mice are hippies. They're stinky, unwashed masses that multiply when you give them a hand out. They only want more. Oh, they'll return the favor with disease and excrement all over your house, and blame you for not solving all their problems... Goddamn Hippies!!!

Look, if you're a dirty hippie, I'm really sorry that you're a dirty hippie. Your revolution is over. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I thought all this out while cleaning the hell out of the entire area around the back of the house.
Now it's all baited and - look at that - most of the bricks have been eaten. That's probably not good. There's probably 10 mice for every one that I've seen, right?

Sh*t. Mouse Sh*t.