MOUSE TRAP

It seems that when ever my husband goes out of town in the fall of the year something strange happens in our house. My husband is an avid hunter. This means that in the fall of the year he spends a great deal of time traveling to other states to hunt pheasants, ducks, geese, grouse, deer and antelope. He also hunts deer and water fowl close to home in the evenings. When he is gone I often have my sisters or friends come to stay overnight so that I am not alone in the house for so many weekends. This is usually the time when the strange things begin to happen.

Last year my husband left for duck hunting on a Thursday evening. I was alone in the house with our two cats. Early in the morning, about four o’clock I felt something furry by my foot. Our Siamese cat does not have claws and he often likes to reach under the covers and play with our feet when he needs to have food in his dish. I kicked my foot and opened my eyes. When I opened my eyes I saw the cat sitting on top of the covers, and I still felt something by my feet. I jumped out of bed and turned on the light and saw a mouse at the foot of the bed. There was also a mouse trap lying alongside the bed. The cat must have carried the mouse trap with the still alive mouse up to our bedroom from the basement. The mouse was injured so I was able to get it into a shoe box and took it outside. This was the first time we had ever had a mouse in the house. I reset the mouse trap and put it back down stairs. The next night I woke up to noise in the basement and again the cats were playing with a mouse. I went to the store and bought another mouse trap and also some poison that I placed in areas that the cats could not reach. When my husband came home at the end of the weekend he found a crack in the foundation where the mice had come in to get out of the cold. He sealed the crack and we did not see another mouse.

This year my husband went on a hunting trip with his brother. My sister-in-law came to spend the weekend with me to go shopping. We were sitting in the living room enjoying a glass of wine and talking when our other cat walked into the room with a mouse in its mouth. She dropped the mouse and the mouse ran into the guest bedroom. My sister-in-law and I both took brooms and brought the cat into the bedroom and shut the door. After several minutes of searching I decided to get a mouse trap and move my sister-in-law into the other guest room. While I was getting the mouse trap the cat caught the mouse again and this time we were able to kill it. The mice must feel safer coming into the house when my husband is not at home because we have not seen another one since he has been back.