Snap Traps Work?

As of Tuesday this week, I did not think snap traps worked.

I went to CVS to buy more glue traps before we went out of town for the weekend. Unfortunately, there were no glue traps at CVS. Either they are ever so popular or some animal rights activist decided to avoid shelving them.

I ended up purchasing two snap traps. I knew we already had a snap trap in the kitchen, set by pest control, that has been left empty for weeks, so I was pretty sure purchasing snap traps was going to be a big fat waste of money.

We left for the weekend and came back on Sunday to discover all of our traps were empty. No surprise there.

Then on Tuesday a man from pest control came to check for more holes since our mouse problem had returned with a vengeance.

All of a sudden, he looks behind the radiator and says, "Oh, you got one right here."

I tried to sound calm because I was horrified as usual but this time I was also embarrassed that I had not noticed before this. It made me look like I was living non-chalantly in squalor with dead animals.

I looked behind the radiator and sure enough, there was little guy sprawled across the trap. I did appreciate that it was not still thrashing around like on a glue trap.

The pest control guy said, "I'll get that out of here for you." Big relief.

Then, without batting an eyelash, snaps on a rubber glove like a surgeon and picks it right up off the floor. He is in the process of telling me how this type of work is all he knows. He is a veritable expert on mouse trapping and has been in the business since he was 19 years old. By the look of him, he has probably been trapping and exterminating mice for about 20 years. I wonder how many mice he has caught. What's his career average?

I takes a look at our other traps and tells me that we have been putting too much bait on the traps. They only need a tiny dab. It's almost better to make sure it's sort of smooshed down into this little groove so it's even more challenging for the mouse to get.

He then inspects the apartment some more. Fills some cracks with caulking and leaves after setting 5 traps.

He must have charmed the traps because, sure enough, we got not one, but two mice the next morning.

It was a moussacre!!

I enlisted Matt once again to get them the hell out. He picked up the first one and insisted on bringing it into the living room to show me how it had literally been caught on the neck like a guillotine. It dangled precariously over my living room rug, so I screamed bloody murder at Matt to get it out of the living room and, more importantly, away from my sensitive soul.

Matt pulled the other one out from behind the fridge. When it was caught, the trap literally jumped two inches further behind the fridge. It was a bit of an ordeal to get it out.

We named the one behind the fridge Thomas Cromwell. I remembered that his beheading had been quite messy. Apparently it took about four blows to chop the dude's head off at the Tower of London. This mouse and Sir Cromwell met rather grizzly deaths.



The one that was caught next to the fridge was a pretty clean snap to neck. This mouse was named Marie Antoinette. Her head was paraded around after she was killed. Matt paraded around with Marie, the mouse, after her death.

Viva l'apartment Allston! One day it will be freed from the vermin that oppress our very livelihood!! One day we will eat cake knowing that we can just eat it without a mouse squirming around in our frosting. Viva la liberacion!

I'm a Genie In a Mouse Trap, Baby!

A few days after Kevin Bacon stopped dancing, I was going through the linen cabinet. I looked down and was shocked to notice that one of my fancy traps might contain a mouse. When you set this kind of trap, you turn this dial to set the trap. The arrow on the top of the trap either points to set, not set, or full (indicating there is something in there.) The arrow indicated there might be something in there.

I dared not pick it up. I knew the minute I picked it up and it felt heavy I would drop it in horror and the mouse would fly out and land on me.

I made Matt investigate the trap instead. Sure enough, an easier way to find out a mouse is in there is by smelling it and boy, was it ripe, according to Matt.

I have to admit I was enormously pleased that one of my fancy traps managed to nab one of the a-holes. Mwahahahaha.

Matt's next joke, which I won't get into, resulted in the naming of the little beast: Genie

Except in this case you can't get the genie to come out by rubbing the outside of the container because it's dead. Oh and this genie probably won't grant you three wishes because it's dead.

...But I Was Wrong When Kevin Bacon Entered Our Lives

We became so secure that the mouse problem was over that we stopped checking the traps entirely.

One evening, I got home from the gym and was starving. I went to the fridge to put together a delicious meal for dinner. I am clumsy so I dropped some stuff from the fridge onto the floor. I picked it up and put it back in the fridge. Then I caused a ziplock bag of Canadian bacon to fall out onto the floor.

It got stuck to the edge of the glue trap we had under the fridge. I pulled the bag causing the glue trap to slide out from under the fridge and to my horror, the trap wasn't empty.

I had sandwich mouse dejavu all over again. I screamed my head off and then gagged a million times.

I then immediately called Matt, who has this special way of being out of the apartment when I have these encounters, and asked if he was close enough to come deal with the problem.

He could not return to the apartment until much later.

I sucked it up and pushed the writing mouse stuck in the glue trap a few inches away from the fridge so I could shut the fridge door yet again.

It looked like this mouse had really been struggling much longer than the first mouse. He seemed groggy and put up far less of a fight. He didn't make a peep.

Fortunately, I had save the cardboard box from the sandwich mouse and put that over the mouse. I then put the kitchen stool on top of the box.

I figured if it escaped it would have a chance to replenish eating the Canadian bacon that was stuck to it and then turn into Mighty Mouse and lift the box off of itself.

I then left the apartment for the evening.

When Matt and I arrived home, Matt had to get rid of the mouse. He decided it would be really funny to try to shove the mouse in my face. It was definitely still moving. I trapped myself in the study where Matt tried to get in to further torture me.

I ended up calling my mother because I knew if I had her on the phone, Matt would behave himself. It worked and Matt reluctantly took our little friend down to the dumpster.

We named him Kevin Bacon, appropriately, except this time he was not so

footloose

.

We Thought It Was All Over...

After making a mouse sandwich I was pretty fed up with all of this gross, half-dead mouse business so I called maintenance and demanded pest control come and fix the problem for good.

First, we had a dude show up when we weren't here and smear caulk into hole that wasn't a hole. He managed to entirely miss a hole under our kitchen sink, inside the cabinet, that was the size of my head. I literally could have crawled in there myself. The lazy guy didn't bother to do anything further. He must have just enjoyed using his caulk but wasn't in the mood to plug up any real holes.

That's what she said.

Then we had a maintenance guy come and do an amazing job sealing the giant hole. He looked under the sink and said, "Wow, how did this not get sealed up?" So he puts a nice sturdy board securely over the hole. He stuffed steel wool in between the counter and the wall, he stuffed more in all the radiator holes.

I felt this sudden sense of security. I imagined the mice were just trapped in the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom and were just going to eventually die in there as soon as their food and air supply ran out.

I slept really well that night and perhaps for a week following...

The Earl of Sandwich

So the mouse families residing in our apartment building continued to escape or avoid getting caught in our traps.

A few days passed since Houdini's miraculous escape. I was calmly going about my business, assuming we would probably never catch anything ever again.

I got up out of bed one morning, checked my email, changed out of my pajamas and went into the kitchen to get some cereal for breakfast. I retrieved my cereal from the cupboard and went to go pull the milk out of the fridge. I opened the door and bent down to the bottom shelf to grab the milk. That is when I noticed the glue trap had been pulled out from under the fridge somehow and my hand was now dangling dangerously close to a writhing mouse, who looked like he had been at it for quite sometime.

The fridge door had caught the top of the mouse causing it to be pulled out from it's little hiding place.

I jumped back and screamed. I shuddered uncontrollably. Then with knees knocking, I contemplated what to do. Matt had already left for the day so I was on my own with this one. I knew I needed to get it out of the house before it pulled a Houdini on us.

Every time I got close to the poor thing, it started to struggle again. This would cause me to scream. It went on like this for a few minutes with me trying to suck it up and move the mouse and the mouse wriggling around and me screaming.

Finally, I attempted to get down to business. I put ziplock bags on my hands to protect myself from mouse germies. I put my shoes on. I took a deep breath. I grabbed the broom and pushed the frantic mouse three inches away from the fridge so I could at least close the fridge door.

I caught my breath and realized there was no picking this mouse up and getting it into a garbage bag and running it downstairs. I just knew I didn't have the stomach.

First, I furiously called the apartment management, who own my building. I told them that we had a mouse problem, yet again, and that I had caught a mouse in a glue trap and was not paying an exorbitant amount of rent to have to exterminate these mice myself. I demanded someone come over and remove the mouse.

In the meantime, I didn't want it to escape, so I had to make sure it wasn't going anywhere.

I looked around and saw another glue trap in the other corner of the kitchen. I picked it up and then stood over the mouse with it. Without coming into contact with the mouse even through the thick cardboard of a glue trap, I dropped the glue trap on top of it. This way it would be stuck on both sides. Try escaping now!

To my horror, as soon as the glue trap landed on top of the mouse, it started to squeak uncontrollably for about ten seconds. I screamed over the squeaking. I felt terrible because I imagined the panic that the little guy was experiencing thinking that perhaps the sky was falling when really it was just being made into a sandwich. A glue trap sandwich.



Then I couldn't stand watching the top glue trap moving about as the mouse underneath struggled continuously so I decided to cover it further.

I found a cardboard box in a closet and placed it over the mouse. Then, just in case this mouse was definitely a miraculous escape artist, I put a heavy kitchen stool on top of the box.

I felt comfortable enough to leave, knowing it would be impossible for the sandwich mouse to escape anywhere.

While I was gone, Matt threw the sandwich out. He said the mouse, "put up some token resistance" until thrown into a garbage bag where it became resigned to it's fate and was trashed in the dumpster outside.

We thus dubbed this mouse the Earl of Sandwich. May he rest in peace.

A little end note:
I would like to acknowledge that I am a cruel, cruel person. Regardless, if you think this story isn't funny, then you probably lack a sense of humor or you are distracted from your sense of humor because of some rather large obstruction that is currently up your butt.

Houdini

We hadn't caught anything in the traps we had set up for almost a week. Then one night, I get up at around 2:30 a.m. Matt was still up playing geeky computer games. As I walk toward the bathroom, I noticed Matt is standing in the kitchen staring at a certain corner that I can't see from where I am standing.

Matt is sort of laughing and sort of cringing. He tells me to look around the corner to see what he is looking at. I instantly know we had caught a mouse and wanted to run the opposite direction and never look. For some reason, instead, I was compelled to look much like rubber-neckers at a car accident.

I see a mouse in the midst of an epic struggle to get off the glue trap. He appears to be doing frantic push-ups to free himself. I can almost hear him hyperventilating. It was horrible and forever burned into my mind.

I turned away in disgust, horror and panic. I tell Matt to take the mouse out of the apartment immediately but Matt had the bright idea of waiting to take out the mouse in the morning when it had worn itself out a bit and would be struggling less.

We went to bed where I imagined the mouse crawling into the bedroom with the glue trap stuck to itself and rage in it's eyes. Finally, I fell asleep but it definitely took over an hour to calm myself down enough to do so.

The next morning Matt got up and walked into the kitchen. All I hear him say is, " oh no..."

I am not sure what to think aside from the fact that there might be six mice piled onto the trap.

I peer into the kitchen to find the glue trap half-way across the kitchen floor. It is empty. All that is left is fur and poop.

The mouse had escaped. All we could do was pray that he did not have a vendetta against us.

The mysterious and sticky mouse, who lurks in our apartment somewhere, waiting for his chance to bite our faces when we sleep, is now referred to as Houdini.

The Montagues and Capulets

So after Romeo and Juliet met their dark and tragic ending while we were vacationing on the Cape, we started to have run-ins with their family members.

For some reason, we had only seen our mouse friends at night just running through the living room. Then we saw one dart into the stove late at night...

Then they started to get brave and we began to see them in broad daylight.

One morning, I saw one dash from the bathroom to our linen closet. I thought, "Oh hell no! You are not nesting in my linens and towels. I will kill you mouse."

This fleeting moment caused me to create a vendetta against the mice in my house because I simply will not put up with this crap. This meant war.

Later that day, we saw a mouse dart from the kitchen sink cabinets to under the fridge also during daylight hours.

After that I started to hallucinate seeing mice EVERYWHERE. If the light bounced off my glasses in a flash I would jump six feet into the air. If something moved in the wind I would scream. I shrieked at dust bunnies, at reflections of birds in the floor and literally everything else that moved in or out of my mind or didn't move at all.

I was tormented and couldn't relax so I went to grocery store and stocked up on an arsenal of mouse-combating weaponry that would put the United States Army to shame. I bought a ton of glue traps because we know those work. I also purchased a new-fangled trap where the mouse goes in this cute little tunnel to peanut butter hidden in it's depths and then snap!! It gets whacked inside with a spring trap mechanism but you never have to see it's corpse EVER.

Based on our recent sitings, we put glue traps and the fun new traps everywhere we saw the little boogers and started to play the waiting game.

Romeo & Juliet

After four enjoyable days on the Cape, Matt and I returned to the hot apartment in the city on a Sunday night. We threw our luggage down in the kitchen, checked our email and settled in. However, as I was going about my regular business settling back in, I noticed an odd smell every time I walked through the living room.

The first time I passed through, I thought it was just my imagination. I wrinkled my nose and walked into the bedroom. The smell disappeared. The second time I walked through the living room I realized the smell was not my imagination but couldn't figure out what the heck it was. I thought, "Did Matt leave a rotting plate of food in here? Is that rotting meat?"

The third time I walked through the living room it dawned on me that the scent I was smelling was the smell of death, the smell of rotting flesh and fur. The fact that the apartment is not air-conditioned did not help. I slowly turned toward our living room glue trap.

Spread across the trap was not one but two mice. I looked away and cringed in horror. I couldn't look again. It was a scene of twisted carnage and I almost threw up.

Immediately, I screamed for Matt and begged him to get the trap out of the apartment so that my jello legs could return to solid-form.

There was a bit of an argument as to why he should have to remove the mice instead of me. I promised to buy him dinner and that was that.

Matt returned from his trip to the dumpster and said that the mice seemed to have died dramatically with their noses touching in what looked like an eternal kiss.

First I barfed in my mind.

Then I pictured the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Juliet takes poison to fake her death, falls asleep, Romeo sees her, thinks she's dead, he takes poison, she wakes up, stabs herself, he wakes up, stabs himself and voila, you have the same tragic scene as the one on the glue trap.

Although things ended tragically for the little star-crossed mouse lovers, I was more than relieved to know we had finally caught the mouse that had tormented us for so long. What worried me is that he had a little friend. I did not like the idea that our apartment mouse was just one of many, but, it became quite apparent after Romeo & Juliet met their fate on a glue trap, that they left behind an extended family to torment us further.