On Saturday night, while cooking, I noticed some black seed-looking things on the stove. Assuming it was just some crap (no pun intended) that someone had left after cooking, I didn’t think much of it. The next morning, it’s everywhere. We’ve got mice! Again, it was only on the stove and counters. After some snooping around, they had to have been getting in through the stove.

On our way back from the race on Sunday, I run in CVS, pick up a pair of cheap old mouse traps, and we’re in business. I load them up with peanut butter Sunday night, wake up Monday morning, and it’s gone. Apparently I hadn’t placed the traps or the peanut butter well enough.

I get home from work on Monday, load the traps up again, put them in an awkward spot so a little thief would have to do some maneuvering for the treat, and head to my room for some quality reading.

Around 9:30pm, Jimmy comes running to my room to notify me that the mouse is active; he had seen him, and when he did it ran back in to the stove. I’m intrigued. I run in to the kitchen and together we wait, and wait, and wait. The little bugger pops up, starts running around, ganks the peanut butter from one of the traps, heads back in to the stove, we wait, he comes back up, goes to the better set up trap, gets the peanut butter from the top, and then goes for the peanut butter on the bottom. He works at it for a good bit, and finally makes his fatal mistake… he changed position. As we watch, “WHAM!” goes the trap, flips upside down, mouse underneath, twitching legs.

The trap got him pretty well. Right on the neck, so that strangulation was swift and hopefully not too painful. I thought the trap might break his neck, but based on his bulging eyes, it was definitely strangulation. It was so wild… Jimmy and I leapt up screaming in excitement… We had been watching this cute little critter just hang out for a couple minutes, and then had watched it die. I so wish we had gotten it all on tape…

I emptied the poor fellow in to a plastic bug, tossed it in the trash can, and put a tally mark on the back of the trap… I’m guessing he wasn’t alone…

Traps are currently loaded, but received no attention last night… He really was alone or his family was too scared by him not returning to venture out.