The Great Mouse Detectives...

....er sort of.

So if you've been following the blog closely in the last few days, you will remember that we have a mouse. Here is the final chapter of his tale.

I searched high and low for wooden mouse traps, but the stores were either out of them or didn't carry them. So I settled for a pack of glue traps, the ones that are basically a piece of poster board with a thick layer of stickiness on top.

We strategically place the traps around our kitchen floor and in the bottom of our coat closet....all places where the little guy was spotted. And then we waited, and waited, and waited some more. The mouse stopped appearing. Mouse sightings went to zero. I hated going into the kitchen because I didn't want to see a  mouse stuck to any of the traps, while at the same time I was praying that we had caught him.

So last night, Brian and I were reading in bed when we heard a little scraping, squeaking near our heads. We both jumped up, because it sounded like the mouse was trying to climb up the wall near the head of the bed. I bravely stood in the center of our bed while Brian shined a light underneath to see if the mouse was there. He wasn't. We searched our entire bedroom and found nothing. We realized then that this mouse debacle was starting to mess with our heads.

We then went into the kitchen to check the traps. Still no mouse. Brian was crouched down on the kitchen floor shinning the light in between our stove and cupboards, when I saw a flash of movement across the kitchen. It was so small that for a few minutes I thought I had imagined it. I kept watching the wall and suddenly the mouse darted across the floor behind our garbage can, which was directly behind Brian. It scared me, and I started screaming, "He's behind you, he's behind you. Get Up!" My screaming scared Brian, who started screaming as well and jumped up off the floor. He was hopping around yelling, 'Where, Where?" We both ran screaming out of the kitchen.

In the midst of our freaking out, we scared the mouse from behind the garbage can. In his haste to run across the kitchen floor and find shelter, he ran across one of the traps. His hind legs got stuck and he was trying to pull himself across the floor with his front legs. Well you would think that we would feel success and relief at this point, but no. I suppose we were elated for a moment, but then we looked at the poor little guy. He was scrambling to get away and we both suddenly felt SO bad. Brain scooped the trap into the mop bucket and we sat there wondering what to do with the doomed little guy. Do we just throw him away in the outdoor garbage cans, where he will remain stuck and die a slow death of hunger? Do we set him on the ground by the garbage cans so the resident cat can come and eat him up? We felt horrible.

Brian took him out of the apartment down to the garbage, and as he was leaving I heard him say, "Don't look at me with those eyes little guy." Brian was gone for awhile and when he came back he was so sad. He said that at first he had dumped him out on the ground to leave for the cat, but he couldn't leave him like that. So he sat there for awhile trying to think of a way to free him from the trap without having to touch him. Finally, he just threw the trap, mouse and all, in the garbage can and came back in. We felt horrible for killing a cute furry little mouse, even though we had to do it. We felt like murderers. We stayed up late watching re-runs of Frasier on Netflix to take our minds off of what we had just done.

We feel better (mostly) about it this morning, but really we are just trying not to think of it. I really didn't see this reaction coming. Hopefully no other mice will decide to come and visit, because I don't relish the idea of having to kill another one.