Got One!

Well, I came home from work last night to see that one of my mouse traps had worked as advertised!

I had noticed a mouse problem a couple of weeks back, and resolved to rid my house of their intrusion, one way or another. Mouse traps are my first tactic. If necessary, I'll get a cat and put her to work. (It will be a female cat - male cats suck - preferably black, and named "Killer".)

I purchased two kinds of traps: Two baitless spring/kill traps, and two "trap door" live capture traps that use bait. For several days I had no luck with either. But finally, tonight, I got my first kill. I had placed a kill trap beside my refrigerator, just by the entrance to my living room. My very first reaction when I saw the little rodent splayed out was, "Oooh! Got One!" I quickly picked up the trap and examined the kill. His little legs were sticking out from the front and back of the trap - the trap having snapped closed while he was apparently leaping through it. His little black eyes were bulged out of his head - as if he was still shocked by the unfortunate turn of events.

I immediately took the trap outside and dumped the body. It was only after I got back inside, however, that I thought I should write a blog post about my little victory - and wouldn't a photograph of the kill be neat, too?! But too late for that. I opted not to go back outside to retrieve the corpse and put it back in the trap for a photo (that I actually considered it may alarm some people). So instead, I drew a quick ink sketch of what I witnessed and scanned it. The sketch is below.


I thought, too, that the way the mouse was splayed out seemed surprisingly similar to a cartoon I drew for my "Small World" series about three years ago. That cartoon is below.



I'm still not entirely satisfied with the mouse traps, though, since it's been two weeks and I have only one kill to show for them. So I still may get Killer if the body count doesn't start going up soon.

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Missing Persons in New England