without a new entry from me!

I haven't been on here in forever. I see my last post was about catching mice. I didn't realize it was that long ago. Funny that it would be about that topic.

8 mice. In about 4-5 days. They started going in the bedroom. Caught two there, the rest in the kitchen. Then it stopped.

Sticky traps are awesome.

So, last night I set up a variety of mousetraps, because I heard, then saw mice under the oven the night before last.

We didn't have any mousetraps on-hand when I saw the mice, so I took a 2 liter bottle, cut the top curved part off, flipped it over, inserted it into the bottom part like a funnel, then taped them together. Then I put peanut butter inside and laid it on its side near the oven. This was the "Preferential Flow" - it's easy to get in, hard to get out.

The next day I thought they had not paid the peanut butter any attention until I got back from the store with sticky traps and one that has a trap door they walk over and closes behind them. When I looked closer at the bottle, I could see they had been snacking on the peanut butter, and for further proof, there was dust, etc in the bottle and it looked like there were footprints where they had been tracking the peanut butter (or coke residue, now that I think about it - I didn't wash out the bottle) in the bottom - so, they had figured a way out.

I set all the different traps up, and within half an hour, I had caught one on a glue trap (I had put peanut butter in the middle of it and placed the trap near the cabinet, where there was fuzz on the floor from the mice. He squealed a bit, and I finally decided to take him out so he wouldn't scare off others (I thought I might have heard them squeal, but it may have just been that one (he? she?) squealing more quietly.

I set up another trap and within half an hour of turning off the kitchen light and going to bed, I heard another. I left it until morning, then disposed of it, placed another glue trap with peanut butter, and left for work.

When I got home, I disposed of number 3. It had its head hanging off the trap, so it could push down with its chin and scoot around that way.

I set the last of the sticky traps. If I catch another, I'm going to have to get some more. They are working very well. The traps, that is, not the mice.

Preferential Flow got off to an early and good start by allowing flow in one direction, but apparently didn't shut if off too well in the other. The exit losses around the protruding nozzle were not sufficient. It did keep good records, though. Without a refresher, I'm not sure how well it will perform tonight. The question is whether or not to send in reinforcements.

Trap Door may be promising, and is more efficient than Glue in the long run, but only if it can do the job.

The first one to score, however, is Glue, with an excellent time of somewhere around 1/2 hour! It has the opponent calling audibles, and it's possible there is some confusion down the line!


No fair guessing, Missy.

It sounds pretty funny.

W: "It's kind of like the electrodes on my head. I didn't feel anything."