We are not sleeping – Amynah is prone to waking suddenly, shrieking, convinced that the mice are stealing her chocolate, or planning to leap onto her slumbering face. I spent the whole of last night, staring at the ceiling, listening to the scurrying… my God, the terrible scurrying…. behind our walls. This would stop only for a few minutes at a time, changing occasionally to the demonic scraping of tiny claws trying to force their way through our plasterwork.
At around four AM, the sleepnessness and terror* combined to form inspiration. A vision, straight from the heavens. And lo, this morning, I did make my vision a reality, using, as all great inventors do, a condiments jar, orange juice bottle, granola box retrieved from the recycling bag, scotch tape and tin foil.
This hole in the wall (normally behind the radiator) is where, we believe, the main point of ingress for our rodent tormentors. This apparatus is designed to attract our intramural guests to their doom** with the scent of North American peanut butter. I feel a sense of triumph not unlike what I imagine Howard Hughes experienced when he designed the Spruce Goose.
* I have good reason to fear the rodents here. I still blame those water rats for my broken arm in 2006.
** Actually, I'm planning to release it near the river if this works.
5 comments:
That's quite a cockamamie scheme you've got going there. Did you actually catch the mouse?
So supposing some wayward mouse does make his way in to your trap.. he is dispatched how exactly - death by peanut butter?
Love it. Hope this works.
As someone who has woken up to tiny, cold mouse feet crawling up my leg (still makes me shiver) I feel your pain.
Ingenious. Love the contraption and I hope it works.
We had a mouse problem in our old apartment in Ottawa, as we realized in our last few weeks in the place; however, it was kept largely at bay by the best defence of all (short of, perhaps - gasp! - a cat) : our dog. (We also thought he was developing doggy dementia for a week or two before we started to suspect mice; he could hear them, and would sit still, staring into space (so we thought) for hours, tracking their movements in the walls and in the attic. Ugh.
The house mouse, Mus domesticus, has hitched its evolutionary fortunes to ours: it is the only other mammal found on all seven continents, and has reached this peak by living off our societies. Nonetheless it still follows the ancient strategy of many small animals: breed quickly and prodigously.
So, what I'm saying it that catch-and-release is for pussies. Just kill the stupid things, should any consent to leap into your trap. I believe both of us have mentioned frying pans.
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