About 1 week ago, we had a most unwelcome visitor to our home. A tiny little mouse. Actually, I only had half a second to witness its size as it ran out and ran back into the pantry in a flash. It looked like a rolling ball of fur as I caught sight of it from the corner of my eye. From the fact that it can go under the door, I gathered it cannot be too big.
As expected, it scared the wits out of me. Even after I saw it ran into the pantry, I still stood up on the chair, just in case it dashed out again. But of course, it didn't. It must have been so frightened by my scream that it's gone into hiding. KK's reaction was like "Cool, a mouse, can we keep it as a pet?" When Hubby got back, he cleared out the pantry but could not see any mouse. I was the only eye witness so I kind of hoped my eyes were playing tricks on me but there were evidence of its presence in the pantry. Some broken bits of chocolates that were left at floor level and mouse droppings. Damn.
This started a whole series of anti-mice clean up operations. I vacuumed and mopped the whole house. We organised the pantry again and made sure everything had a packaging or container. We threw away food that we thought might have been contaminated by the mouse and wiped with antiseptic solution containers that might have been touched. Bins were cleared or covered and no food or utensils were left exposed overnight. I read that mice hated the smell of mint. So I plucked a bunch of mint leaves from our garden and placed them inside the pantry and around the entrances of the house. Of course, we also set up a mouse trap. We used a small piece of bread smeared with peanut butter as a bait. Mice love peanut butter.
We were quite sure the mouse will be hungry and come out at night to look for food. In the day, we were around all the time and I don't think it would find anything to eat in our pantry that is not wrapped properly. However, we only caught the mouse on the second night, after several failed attempts. The first time we set it up, being inexperienced, Hubby didn't shut the lid of the trap properly and although the mouse went into the trap, it escaped. I was devastated and worried that it will now learn that it was trap and not go in anymore. For 2 nights, I couldn't sleep well, wondering about the its activities and if the mouse will be caught. I will be trying to sleep but my ears were picking out every little sound outside the room. The suspense was killing.
After the first night, we woke up to find the trap activated but there was nothing inside. On second night, Hubby awoke at 12.30am to say he heard the trap and it could be the mouse. He checked and indeed it was inside. Our trap was one that trapped the mouse alive. So we needed to go outside and release the mouse. Hubby said he was not going out so late at night. Now I worried that it might escape during the night and all our efforts will be wasted. In the end, Hubby couldn't take my paranoia and he did dress up and got out of the house in the middle of the night to release the mouse. I reminded him to go further away so it wouldn't run back in. If it were a smart mouse, it wouldn't. Dinner outside was probably more sumptuous.
No comments:
Post a Comment