Just when you thought it was safe to venture into your chitchen. That scurrying that I caught out of the corner of my eye at 0-skunk-30 this morning was definitely NOT cygnus buccinator. I can’t even imagine the ruckus that cygnus buccinator might have made in my house. I think I’d be hiding under the bed.

This intruder was murinae mus musculus. Aka scurry mouse. As opposed to puffalump mouse (mus poofaloompfus?). Like the mice in the photoooo. Well, two of them anyway. The big one is homo sapiens, of course. The mus poofaloompfus on the left is named “Squeaky Speedy Water Janet Pop Mousey Mushroom Ears” or “Original Mouse”. On the right, we have “New Mouse”. There was also “Bouncy-bow Pink-bow Purple-Bow Blanket Mousey Mushroom Ears” and “Hisse”. Those two came in slightly different colors and Hisse had a little jingle bell in one foot that once scared us to death during a Freddy Krueger movie (don’t ask). And we have recently added a new copy of Original Mouse when The Beautiful Julia sent her old mouse to The Planet Ann Arbor. Or did I dream that? I’ve been hangin’ out with a lot of Octo-women and Nanamooses lately and may be emulating them on the short-term memory thing… Love you moom 😉

Anyway, we have been plagued by scurry mice almost since we bought this disaster area. We don’t *always* have them but several times a year, they find their way in. About the first time this happened, Grandroobly was here visiting his grandchildren and he obtained some diazinon (yeah, I know) and resolutely sprinkled it around the perimeter of the place. We were actually trying to deal with ants that time but I think it was a couple years before mice ventured here again. Usually we just use traps. Alas. I do NOT like to kill living things. Except for moe-skee-toes and biting flies. And occasionally spiders if they are in the shower with me. Mice? Not so much. So that jorb usually falls to the GG. With much nagging.

Mostly we use the traditional snap-type trap. Once when we were in Florida visiting Grandpa Garth and Grandma Sally, there was a wee little scurry mouse problem in their fancy condo and I remember a certain beach urchin saying, “When Grandma snaps the trap, the mouse gets away.” Roight… The only problem with the snap-type trap is that sometimes the mouse does not die immediately. I can grab some tongs and pick up a trap with a dead mouse in it and, on a good day, I can even kind of look the other way as I transport the mouse to the Blue and Only Bathroom and use the tongs to release the mouse into the Blue and Only Toilet and flush it down. (And then scrub the heck outta the tongs with bleach.) I once found a mouse in a trap in the Landfill Dungeon flopping around like crazy. It was trapped via the mid-section kicking and screaming and it was pretty clear it wouldn’t live. I drowned it in a bucket. I hope I never have to do that again. I felt like god. I did not like that feeling.

Then there was the live trap experiment. In theory, I like the idea of live traps. The problem? It’s a lot of work but also… Well, at the beginning it was soooo much fun for certain people that they kept the cute little mouskets in a big ventilated glass jar. With guinea pig / rat type shavings. And they were even fed, if I remember correctly. They would stay in this loverly little hotel overnight and the GG would let them go in Miller Woods on his way to work in the morning. Except for the beautiful and seemingly exceptionally intelligent *blonde* mouse. Yeah, I know… In the world of mus musculus, maybe “blonde” has a different stereotype than it does in the world of homo sapiens? He kind of wanted to *keep* that mouse. I didn’t blame him but I wouldn’t have it. Eventually, the interest in catching and releasing mus musculus tapered off. And so we are back to the snap-type traps. I will not go the sticky tape route! (Er, did I already say that?)

Mus musculus vs. Kayakus horibilis, round 10,487.33213.

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