They’re Baaaack . . .

When the mouse laughs at the cat, there's a hole nearby.
― Nigerian Proverb

If one mouse is a spark...then ten thousand are a conflagration.
― Carmen Agra Deedy

A mouse never entrusts his life to only one hole.
— Plautus

I wasn’t going to post about this today because I already talked about it on my other blog, although the focus there was on why I didn’t get much writing done last week.

Anyway . . . remember back to the beginning of May when I shared the problem we were having with mice in the house? Between the traps and the cat, 13 mice were sent to meet their maker. There was a 14th mouse, but he figured out how to eat the peanut butter from the trap without setting it off. We stopped baiting the trap and after a few days we didn’t see any mouse signs. Problem solved.

Or so we thought.

Now, a little backstory is required. I have never seen any signs of a mouse in my office. This despite the fact I used to keep a secret stash of snacks in my bottom desk drawer and chocolate on my desk.

In an effort to be healthier, I stopped stashing snacks, although I did keep the Kinder eggs (foil-wrapped chocolate eggs with a plastic bulb inside containing a toy) for the granddaughter and I to share when she came to visit on Sundays in that drawer.

In August I picked up a few eggs and left them on my desk because they were a little soft from the heat, but we never got around to eating them.

Last week, when I was cleaning my office, I discovered the Lindt chocolate bar I’d been given for Christmas, that I’d only eaten half of and left in the small bookcase I keep my tea things on, had been chewed on. There were also mouse droppings on the bookcase. Can we say Ewwwww?

This called for a more thorough cleaning of the office, which is when I discovered that one of the Kinder eggs on my desk had been broken into:

There was an open baggy of dark chocolate on the desk that hadn’t been touched, nor had my Werther’s caramels that I keep in a jar. The bottle of Planters Peanuts in my stash drawer, however, had the crap chewed out of the lid. It was still sealed, but it still went into the trash.

So I thoroughly cleaned my office and when I moved things around to vacuum in all the corners I discovered the remains of a Kinder egg in a corner by the bookcase under my window. And by remains, I mean the half-chewed plastic bulb, the toy/prize, and a few flecks of foil from the wrapper.

Once I was done cleaning I scattered little bundles of cloves done up in cheesecloth around the room (I had an aunt who swore by cloves to keep rodents away) and figured that was that.

But late Saturday night, the hubby reached for the Cadbury chocolate that he keeps in a caddy beside his recliner in the living room, and what do you know? It had been nibbled on. He’s kept chocolate there for months, and there’s never been any sign of a mouse. I guess the word is out in the mouse kingdom that we no longer have a cat.

So he rebaited the trap we had in the dining room, and it wasn’t long before there was a snap. He caught a second one shortly after, and a third one sometime during the night. We really need to figure out where they’re getting in.

And I think it’s time to start kitten shopping.