The saga continues. After the night of the original phone call from my aunt she spent the next five nights sleeping at my house. She kept claiming that she was intruding and that she'd understand if she was no longer welcome, but that made no sense to me. I have extra rooms and I'm happy to loan them out to anyone who wants/needs the use of them. Aunt Carolanne was, and can forever, continue to be a welcome guest in my house.
Anyway, here's what happened next. On Friday morning, Uncle Cam got home from his business trip and got to be surprised by the glue traps set up on his kitchen counters. One of them had some fur and dirty smearing on it, was tipped over and chewed through. He called the original exterminator from the day before, a friend who was an exterminator and he and his business associate who gave him a ride home from the airport all got manly and decided to work on the problem. The original exterminator, who swore that it had to be a mouse the day before, now was sure that it couldn't be. Of course, this probably had more to do with his plot to catch the thing failing than any evidence to the contrary. He doubled up the glue traps and said he'd come back with different stuff. So, his solution was to put traps side by side to prevent the mouse from flipping over with the trap and managing to chew his way free. Maybe he hoped it would make itself into a little glue trap sandwich. My uncle went out and got super duper traps that were supposed to stick better.
That night, even with my uncle home, my aunt refused to sleep at the house. They got to my house late Friday night and she got ready for bed. First, she insisted on making sure any rug fuzzes were not mouse droppings and that there weren't any in the guest room bed sheets. I, personally think we're safe from a mouse problem. We've got a lot of hawks flying over our house all the time. Those little buggers would get picked off as soon as they darted toward the building. And, we have no trees for cover.
Saturday, they pulled out the stove, but found nothing and they set up cage traps and some claw traps. Now, I'm just imagining the house to be filled with traps. There is peanut butter scented poison bait tossed behind every appliance and anywhere a critter can get to it, but not out in the open. There are glue traps set up on both sides of the oven and sink on the kitchen counter and by all of the doors. There are french doors off the kitchen and the front door and that door that goes from the family to the play room and the one from the play room to the garage. The original exterminator added a couple of claw traps filled with some kind of rodent pheromone and two metal cage traps with bowls of peanut butter in them.
Sunday morning, Aunt Carolanne goes home and checks her traps. There are no mice in the traps. The door to one of the cage traps snapped, but there's nothing in it. The other cage trap did not snap, but the bowl of peanut butter has been licked clean. Sunday night she plans to stay at home. I tell her that she is always welcome here and her room is ready for her, but she's sleeping in her own bed. She pulls out the bed and looks behind and under it with a flashlight. She checks the bathroom, the closets and behind all the furniture. She strips the bed and checks between and under mattresses, lifting even the boxspring and removing the dust ruffle. Then, satisfied that her bedroom is mouse free, she puts it all back together. I was checking my phone and trying to keep an eye out for her call, but by the time I went upstairs Sunday night, I'd heard nothing from her. I was tucked in bed, reading a book when Mickey said I think your phone is buzzing. Sure enough, I'd somehow turned off the sound and it was my uncle, telling me that my aunt was at my front door and could I please let her in. I found her standing on my porch in the dark with her pillows under one arm and her bag in the other. She had really tried, but she just couldn't do it.
Monday morning, she was off again. She informed my uncle that they would both be taking the day off from work. So, they emptied everything out of the kitchen. Threw away everything they could, disinfected anything a mouse could have touched and washed and boxed up everything in the cabinets. Now, the issue became, if the mouse eats the poison bait and then dies behind, in or under her cabinets, she wants them empty so that his dead mouseness can't get near her stuff and they can find him and get him out right away. Monday night, I call to see how it went and offer our house again. She accepts, but seems to feel like I'm being put out somehow, which I'm not and I assure her of that. Before she left she put jellybeans out again and made a point of making a kind of code to see if any are gone. She put 14 each of one color on the very top of the bowls. One bowl went on the counter, the scene of the original crime and was surrounded by glue traps. The other bowl was on the ground, surrounded by glue traps.
Tuesday morning, the report was in that the mouse had eaten some, but not all of the jellybeans. Not very many, but enough that the secret bean code made it obvious. No mice were on any traps. My uncle is sent out to purchase good old fashioned snap traps. The kind my grandfather swore by. He put a piece of salami and some peanut butter on it to lure the mouse and make it tug and set off the trap. They salami and PB'd them up and set them out. When the mouse managed to eat all of the peanut butter from the big cage trap, the exterminator was convinced it was a mouse again. He took his big traps away. By now the smell of peanut butter has permeated the entire first floor of the house. My uncle wants to put jelly beans on the glue traps. It sounds like a good idea to me, but it doesn't happen.
So, now we are another few days out. Aunt Carolanne has been sleeping at home for the last couple of nights and she is just waiting for the smell of decaying mouse to make itself known. She's already lined up a guy who makes a living tracking the smell of small dead things hidden in your house and gets rid of them. At this point, she's no longer dreading the smell of dead critter. She knows it will at least be an answer to her ongoing mystery. There's no good mouse, but a dead mouse. Even if he's all smelly.
