An early Christmas present

We are at peace.

After the sticky traps failed, we called the Orkin man. He came, set a bunch of sticky traps, and plugged up holes with steel wool. The next day, I noticed some of the steel wool was gone, so I plugged the hole with a plastic bag. The next day the plastic bag was gone, so I put another one in its place. It was gone again the next day. We kept hearing sounds by the oven, so we called the Orkin man to come back. he was shocked to see that a) the steel wool was being displaced and b) that the rodent was avoiding every sticky trap. So, he dropped some poison into the hole where the bag was disappearing and we braced ourselves for a dead rodent in the walls.

For three days, nothing. I assumed it had worked.

Then the scratching began again, by the stove again. I think I mentioned in the previous post about the rodent that there is a fairly large hole behind the stove that I tried to fill with bits of wood. I decided to make it more secure by adding tile and wood. And that led to the beginning of the end.

The next night, Christina saw the rodent peek out from the bottom drawer of the oven. Then he made more noise around the oven, and we realized that he couldn't get back into the walls. So we blocked his exit out into the kitchen with steel traps that Christina got from her dad that he uses at the test site. The rodent tried to exit, bumped a trap, set it off, and retreated.

The next morning (Dec. 23), Christina bought eight (eight!!) large snap traps, baited them with string cheese and put them into the bottom shelf of the oven. An hour later, I got the blessed call at work..."I heard a snap! I'm going to check! We got him!"

And got him we did.

A mouse, yes, but a big mouse (body was probably about seven inches).

We killed him without poison.

We killed him without sticky traps.

We killed him without Orkin Men, boxes, or bags.

The stress of the last month melted away. I saluted my adversary and then ceremoniously put him in a plastic bag and threw him away.

And on the night before Christmas/as I walked through the house/I knew not a creature was stirring/not even The Mouse.

'Cos he was dead.

The End.