Friday, September 4
My mom and her siblings spent the day preparing for the pseudo-wedding reception party they were hosting for my brother and his new wife (they got married in Hawaii and eschewed that sort of thing, which is cool and all but which left the two families un-introduced to each other).
How to trap and kill it? I wanted us to have a comfortable room to sleep in for our last night there.
My dad bought some humane D-Con mouse traps, and I baited them and set them up around the room, and then set up my flip-style video camera to monitor the traps after I left the room. Like clockwork, it would emerge a minute after I left the room, smell around the traps, and then wander away, and then I’d return to the room and see it running back into the closet (where there were other, older mouse holes).
I became really obsessed with trying to catch this thing. I needed some more hard-core traps. My uncle and aunt, who are into their Finnish heritage, set up this Finnish-style trap, which consists of a paint bucket with a few inches of water at the bottom and a baited, spindle on the handle. The theory is that the mouse will venture onto the handle and step on the spindle, and unless it’s some sort of barrel-rolling champion, will fall into the bucket and drown. I captured some great footage of the thing climbing up the bucket, pulling the spindle toward it, and eating all of the cheese.
Then it returned into the wall and didn’t come out for the rest of the day. We added a traditional mouse trap and a sticky tape trap, but the mouse wouldn’t come out. It was full.
How to trap and kill it? I wanted us to have a comfortable room to sleep in for our last night there.
My dad bought some humane D-Con mouse traps, and I baited them and set them up around the room, and then set up my flip-style video camera to monitor the traps after I left the room. Like clockwork, it would emerge a minute after I left the room, smell around the traps, and then wander away, and then I’d return to the room and see it running back into the closet (where there were other, older mouse holes).
I became really obsessed with trying to catch this thing. I needed some more hard-core traps. My uncle and aunt, who are into their Finnish heritage, set up this Finnish-style trap, which consists of a paint bucket with a few inches of water at the bottom and a baited, spindle on the handle. The theory is that the mouse will venture onto the handle and step on the spindle, and unless it’s some sort of barrel-rolling champion, will fall into the bucket and drown. I captured some great footage of the thing climbing up the bucket, pulling the spindle toward it, and eating all of the cheese.
Click to viewThen it returned into the wall and didn’t come out for the rest of the day. We added a traditional mouse trap and a sticky tape trap, but the mouse wouldn’t come out. It was full.