There's a mouse in my kitchen, and it's mocking me.

[channlluv]

Okay, so three nights ago I'm tossing something in the trash just before dinner and I glimpse a lithe little brown shape reflected weirdly in a glass on my counter, ducking behind a small potted orchid I have there. "Was that what I think it was?" I thought to myself. A moment later, it sticks it's little head out and scampers along the back of my sink - I'm calling my husband by now - around the just-washed dishes, right over the peeled carrots and sliced cucumber and sweet red pepper I was preparing for dinner - I grabbed the salad bowl from out of its path -around the spice carousel, behind the knife block - I grabbed the frying pan with the steaks cooking on the stove - and into the unlit back burner of the gas stove.

Yikes.

So we eat dinner and I'm freaking out because there's a mouse behind my stove. After dinner I clean up while DH goes to buy traps. By the time he gets back, I've cleared everything off the counter and bleached them.

He sets the traps with peanut butter and I've washed the dishes and have set some of them out on a clean towel to dry, including the frying pan, which is inverted and leaning over the salad bowls. I leave the dishes there and we retire to the living room to watch TV and head off to bed, confident that the humane traps will do their job and there will be a new furry resident of the back flower bed in the morning.

So next day I wake up and go into the kitchen to see what trap was sprung...nada. They haven't moved. I go to put the dried dishes away and find a nasty little surprise. The mouse has dragged the seed hull from the sweet red pepper, which I'd left out on the other side of the sink to dry out for planting, and dragged it around the sink and over onto the drying towel under the frying pan where he has chewed it clean, leaving the seed husks in a neat little pile, alongside a little pile of several mouse poops.

I couldn't believe it.

DH went to buy more traps while I bleached the dishes and the counters and threw away the towel.

He comes back with these poison mousenip chew sticks that are supposed to be effective in 3-5 days. We place them behind the knife block, behind the blender, and one either side of the sink tucked up in the window well, and then another over behind the orchid.

We leave for work at 7:15 and Tuesdays are my long days, so I don't get home until 6:30. The mouse, I find out, has carried one of the poison sticks over to the stove and tried to get it down the too-narrow hole where the gas ring comes up. The stick had been chewed. We left it there, figuring the mouse would come back for more.

We took dinner into the living room to watch TV while we ate and while we're in the other room, this little mouse comes out and gets the other chew stick from behind the knife block and carries it out into the middle of the counter!

There were little blue crumblies all around it. We moved it back behind the knife block and marveled at the brazenness of this little mouse.

Since then I've come into the kitchen to find the chewie moved out to the middle of the counter several more times, and then over to the hole where the gas ring comes up from inside the stove. There were two little chewsticks there as of this morning.

I stayed home from work today (I was in a minor car accident on Tuesday morning and was feeling stiff and sore today) and I was in and out of the kitchen all day, in broad daylight and everything, and this mouse has pulled the third chewstick over toward the counter with the knifeblock, toward the stove.

It is strong for a mouse, and I think it has a cloaking device.



Assuming Super Mouse survives the poison sticks - it seems to be more like mouse vitamins to me - anyone have any suggestions? The humane D-Con peanut butter traps didn't work at all for this mouse.

Roxy - okay with mice in the garden, but not in the kitchen

[KnottedYet]

Had one of these supermice.

Put a killer snap-trap baited with peanut butter into an empty kleenex box with a hole cut into it, facing into his/her favorite gap along my floorboards. Heard a SNAP during the night. Dumped kleenex box into the garbage without ever looking into it.

No more problem.

[channlluv]

Thanks, Knot. I like not having to look in the box after the fact.

Roxy

[Maxxxie]

I've had many fun times killing mice. My most successful method has been hand-to-paw combat.

If you want to read some of my Tales Of Mickey, feel free to click this link (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=254975) and this link (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=287745). Be warned: They both contain a significant amount of cursing, and the first post of the first link (there's more than one Tale of Mickey in the first link) contains significant overuse of the C word. I apologise. Try to look past it, if you can. Aside from my hilarious Tales of Mickey, there are some useful suggestions from other members about how to get rid of mice.

Hope this helps.
Max

[Pedal Wench]

If you want to read some of my Tales Of Mickey, feel free to click this link (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=254975) and this link (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=287745).

Maxxie - that's just hilarious! You must write for a living - you're incredible! What a page-turner!!! Really - if you haven't written a book, you should start. Now!

[channlluv]

Those were pretty funny stories.

And the house next door to me is renovating, but nobody there was hoarding. They just had 8 people living in a house built for 3. (Three licenses drivers, six cars...go figure...and two of them were big, big truck things. They're all gone now.)

Roxy

[Cataboo]

The previous tenant to my apartment in grad school had had a dog and just left out dog food all day.

In the first 2 weeks, I killed 10 mice. And usually would kill one or two a month, so I just left traps set constantly.

You really want the hair trigger old style traps, not those fancy ones with the fake looking cheese.

For the especially devious mice, I'd line up 3-4 traps baited with peanut butter against the wall in the corner... so bait towards wall, mouse could possibly get the peanut butter off the outside one without triggering it, but it couldn't get to the peanut butter on the inner traps without triggering one of them...

all organic food matter or whatever was kept in plastic containers or in the fridge... even if it didn't need to be refrigerated.. dirty dishes if I didn't wash them immediately got shoved in the fridge, too. (that was especially after my landlord gave me 2 species of roaches in a used applicance one summer) So only source of food was the peanut butter traps.

[Selkie]

When we had some mice a couple years ago, we got some electronic traps. Put the bait inside the box and activate it. When the mouse goes inside---ZAP, goes to mouse heaven. The best thing is that there is an indicator light so you know when you got one. Then you can have DH dispose of the body (the traps are reusable and battery powered).

[OakLeaf]

We live in the country, and mice are just a (disgusting) fact of life.

Rule #1 is, while we're not the world's greatest housekeepers, when there's a mouse in the house, it goes into high gear. If I have to leave something out to dry, like your pepper, it goes into a colander with a lid on it. Kitchen gets vacuumed of crumbs after dinner every night. All food containers are kept tightly closed - although in general, a casual intruder won't chew through cardboard or plastic unless we're away from home for a while. They don't have to eat a lot, mostly they've come into the house looking for shelter not food, so if there's anything to eat besides the bait, they'll choose that.

Rule #2 is they have patterns where they like to go. They're not as rigid as ants or deer, but they have patterns. Place traps all over the house, but if you've caught one mouse somewhere, pay most attention to traps in the same area for the next one. Remember again that they're probably looking for shelter, not so much for food, so the kitchen may not be the best place to trap them. At least 90% of the mice I trap are in the basement in front of the dryer. I think they're more likely to investigate a trap when they feel secure generally.

Rule #3 is that they need water. Sponge out the bottom of any sinks that don't drain completely, and place a trap near your dehumidifier drain if you have one.

Rule #4 is if you're a bleeding heart like me, once you trap a live mouse, take it at least a mile and a half from your house or it will come back. :o


Peanut butter is usually good bait, but it needs to be something they can smell, so I'm guessing non-stabilized PB is probably better. I don't buy the other kind so I don't know for sure. Often they will go for ketchup. Or the cartoon stand-by, a small morsel of the stinkiest cheese you have.

I'd avoid poisoning mice in the house even if I didn't mind killing them, for the simple reason that they will go into the walls to die, and if you've never had this happen, you don't want to experience the odor. You know what road kill smells like after a few days, imagine it in your kitchen. It will linger for 2-3 weeks and return whenever the humidity is high. If you want to use poison, keep it in out-buildings and back alleys (in specifically designed containers so kids and pets can't get in).

Mice Cubes (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EGGXTM/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000WB13QC&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=190YDR6ZCHKGA3NPS3CF) are the traps I've used for years. They used to be available at retail everywhere, but the stores figured out that something this cheap, effective and reusable wasn't making them any profit :mad:. If you're handy, it would be easy enough to make one. It's just a polycarbonate box with a door that swings in from a hinge at the top. The door is slightly longer than the opening, so it will only swing in one direction, and once the mouse is in, it can't get out. There are a few air holes in the door so the mice can smell the bait, although I usually smear a tiny bit of PB outside the door. They can't steal bait from this trap - they have to actually go inside to get it. In 10 years we've had one big chunky mouse that figured out how to get out of this trap - by bouncing around so much that it eventually turned the trap upside down and the door could swing in. We put a brick on top of the trap and caught it the next night. <evil g> Other than that, it's impossible to defeat this trap.


Good luck, they can be really frustrating. :mad: :(

ETA: hehehe Maxx :D

[bmccasland]

Get a cat?

[Biciclista]

Get a cat?

yeah, that is what i was going to say. Feeding poison takes a few days. And then you have a body to first find and then dispose of.

I'm sure the poison you fed the mouse will take effect, but be warned that it will not die on YOUR schedule.

I've lived in the city and in the country (in the middle of a hayfield in Idaho for a few years) and have never had rodents in my house, well, except for the ones that the cats brought in! I cannot attribute it to my fastidious house cleaning, because we're careless and even sloppy. It is the cats!
When i was a kid we had a mouser who was so good that we'd take him to other people's houses to catch mice.

Good luck btw.

[Cataboo]

Oh. Don't ever use glue traps.

Becuase there's the problem that they flop all over the place to try to get free and somehow work themselves under bookcases and you're wandering around looking for a mouse on a glue trap, and then cause ... you have to get them off somehow and do something with them.

[DebW]

I just figure I can live with a few mice. Since I'm not fastidiously clean and may leave dirty dishes out over night, the mice have food and I deal with them. When they get brazen enough to run around in broad daylight, then I do a better job of cleaning and storing food. Luckily, no sign of mice yet in my new apartment.

[OakLeaf]

Trouble with "living with them" is that they're there for shelter, and they will go everywhere.

They don't distinguish between your good, expensive clothes, your irreplaceable souvenir T-shirts, or the painting clothes that they're welcome to, when they decide to shred things for their nests.

I'm not squeamish, but when I find droppings in my silverware drawer, I'm going to wash the whole lot, and doing it every day gets old (and wasteful).

And the one time when one ran across my face while I was sleeping really freaked me out.

Thankfully, I don't live in an area where hantavirus is prevalent. But in some areas of the US, mouse infestations can be deadly to humans. I've known people (granted, in a depressed rural area) for whom it was more economical to burn their house down than to try to sanitize it.

If anyone has figured out how to keep them from eating the wiring in your car/motorcycle (which sometimes just means a couple of hours soldering, and sometimes - especially on the Prius - means a tow and $500 at the dealership)...

[Kalidurga]

Get a cat?

Don't get a cat unless you enjoy picking up pieces of dismembered &/or regurgitated mouse.


And I'll second the veto on glue traps. You can hear the mouse flopping around until it dies and the glue ends up stuck on anything that's nearby.

My mouse problem from several years ago didn't end until I sealed up the hole behind my stove and the condo HOA replaced a bunch of the siding on the building. You can try any sort of trap imaginable, but the only sure thing is to seal up their entryway.

[Biciclista]

And I'll second the veto on glue traps. You can hear the mouse flopping around until it dies and the glue ends up stuck on anything that's nearby.

My mouse problem from several years ago didn't end until I sealed up the hole behind my stove and the condo HOA replaced a bunch of the siding on the building. You can try any sort of trap imaginable, but the only sure thing is to seal up their entryway.
+++ good points!

[IvonaDestroi]

:( poor little guy :(

I can't help it, I just can't kill them because they are so cute and intelligent... and funny, as you mentioned in your story, lol!

But somehow allowing the cat to get it seems ok, because then it's just nature. Thats what I do nowadays. And it's fun to watch. The mouse will trick the cat, then the cat tricks them, and the patience of my kitty is always so amazing to me.

I used to use those humane traps at my old job and they worked like a charm... we used peanut butter. I 'd let the little guys go every morning in the park.

With poison he will probably die somewhere in your wall. My landlord put out poison traps and that's what happened, they just kept dying in the walls and it STANK, and there was not a thing we could do about it... not to mention the thought of mouse corpses permanantly implanted inside your walls.

at my old work we were using these:
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Mouse-Trap-Humane-Mousetrap/dp/B000YFA7HW Just make sure you take them far away. They have an amazing sense of direction. Since he's so fond of your counter, I'd just put it there. But he's probably dead by now anyways :(

In anycase I'm on the mouse's side, he sounds like an awesome little guy, lol! :D

[withm]

One of our clients had extensive damage from mice. Here's the portion of his bill that covered the repair. Mice ate the insulation and wiring throughout his house. You might think twice about choosing to live with mice. And yes, it was a large house. A very large house.


Rodent Damage Demo & Repair, Electrical Inspection $73,000
Remove lights, ceiling fans, switch & receptacle covers, HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving, baseboard, casing, paneling, drywall and insulation from the areas listed below. Inspect wires for missing insulation. Any wiring repairs required will be priced after inspection. Reinstall insulation. Install and finish drywall. Reinstall casing, baseboard and paneling. Stain trim and paneling. Paint drywall. Reinstall HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving ,receptacle covers, lights and ceiling fans.

[Biciclista]

One of our clients had extensive damage from mice. Here's the portion of his bill that covered the repair. Mice ate the insulation and wiring throughout his house. You might think twice about choosing to live with mice. And yes, it was a large house. A very large house.


Rodent Damage Demo & Repair, Electrical Inspection $73,000
Remove lights, ceiling fans, switch & receptacle covers, HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving, baseboard, casing, paneling, drywall and insulation from the areas listed below. Inspect wires for missing insulation. Any wiring repairs required will be priced after inspection. Reinstall insulation. Install and finish drywall. Reinstall casing, baseboard and paneling. Stain trim and paneling. Paint drywall. Reinstall HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving ,receptacle covers, lights and ceiling fans.

wow, cats are a lot cheaper. :eek::eek::eek::eek:

[oxysback]

I work in the pest control industry. Kalidurga is right, the only way to make sure more don't come in is to seal up the entryways. The usual suspects are crawl space vents with holes in the mesh, wiring coming out of your house that has a hole bigger than the wire, and garage doors that are missing the seal from the bottom. You can usually tell where they're getting in from their droppings. A cheap, temporary fix is steel wool. Push some in any holes that are suspect. :)

[Cataboo]

Hrm. I didn't think of leaving the mouse attached to the glue trap and just waiting for him to die.

I did the... erm... if I rip him off and let him go however many miles from here... he'll have lost so much hair & skin that he'll probably die (it was winter...)... Not to mention I didn't know how weak he was from flopping on that thing from however long.

Then did the... erm, I could stick him in the freezer, but then I'd have a dead mouse in the freezer. Eww. I could drown him in a bucket, but then I'd have dead mouse contaminated bucket, and since I was in an apartment, I couldn't really go hose it out. Eww. I could smash him with a hammer, but then I'd have a bloody hammer. Eww.

Finally, I stuck him in a few plastic bags, and stuck him behind my car wheel and backed up. Fastest most humane least eww way to get rid of a mouse that I could think of... But then I tossed all the other glue traps I had.

As for living with them... mice spread the plague and carry hantavirus. I tried to avoid disease carriers. Eww.

And cats.... never really cared from them, and am just allergic enough I don't get near so it doesn't get worse. Eww.

[OakLeaf]

There's no sealing most homes against mice without some major rebuilding. They can get in through soffit and attic vents unless very fine mesh was installed when the place was built. They can get in through the gaps between siding and foundation. All they need is 1/4".

[channlluv]

He was still alive and enjoying the warm confines of my stove top this morning - I lifted the lid where the burners are to look underneath to where the pilot lights are because the chewsticks hadn't moved overnight, and I figured I'd find his little body there and I wanted to move it before I started cooking breakfast.

Ninja Mouse was there waiting for me. I had both hands full of stove top and couldn't react. He looked up at me and then walked amazingly calmly to the back of the stove and climbed up into what must be a hollow section on the top back of the unit. For crying out loud.

DH went and bought the snap traps and set one there in the stove top. Oh yay. Mouse innards...well, there's so much poop in there I can't cook in it anyway until it's vacuumed and bleached. Yuck.

And yes, we have a cat. Her name is Duchess. Let's just say she's not much of a mouser.

I also live in the desert southwest where hanta virus is present, so I'm acutely aware of possible health issues. I hope he doesn't go into the wall to die. Or into some part of the stove I can't take apart. Geez.

So far I've only seen the one mouse. I think he may be a rogue ninja mouse looking for shelter.

Roxy

[OakLeaf]

I never had a cat (as an adult), but my neighbors did, and all they did was chase the mice into my walls. Made the mouse problem worse, as far as I'm concerned. I can't see how it would be any different if the cat was actually in the house... it still can't get into the walls and cupboards where the mice go.

[Cataboo]

I never had a cat (as an adult), but my neighbors did, and all they did was chase the mice into my walls. Made the mouse problem worse, as far as I'm concerned. I can't see how it would be any different if the cat was actually in the house... it still can't get into the walls and cupboards where the mice go.

Tom was never that good at catching Jerry.

[Chicken Little]

I had one that I let live around Christmas time, and just chased it out the back door, because it seemed the seasonal thing to do. As of January 6th, I had 5 of them giving me the finger from the top of the DVD player while I watched my original version of Star Wars. NO MORE! Sealed every hole I could find, and put out traps. Haven't seen one since.

[tangentgirl]

I was showing clients around my office the other day. We went to the kitchen to get some coffee and noticed a rube-goldberg-like setup with the following items:


A plastic chair
Tilted against the chair, a small trashcan
Laid across the chair and trashcan, with the bulk of its weight in the trashcan, an empty cardboard paper towel tube with peanut butter at the end over the trashcan


"What's that?" asked one of my clients? I looked at it, realized that, oh god it's some kind of homemade mousetrap, and feigned ignorance. It must be those wacky creative types messing around again, right? Who knows what they're thinking. Yes, I blamed the artists. Sorry artists.

I shuffled the clients out of the kitchen.

I asked our IT mananger/office handyman (poor dude) about it later and confirmed. We had mice. Pural. The cleaning folks hade even spied them dancing on someone's desk a few nights earlier.

We did end up getting some no kill traps, and my queries got me a phone call when we caught one of the mice, just to see for myself. Ick!

[deeaimond]

We live on the ground floor and get mice once in a while. once we had a rat ! It ate some of my dirty laundry>>> I had mouse/rat droppings in my room.... my dog is hopeless at even alerting us to the rodents. Usually we know from traces of mice droppings. I wish they'd infest my brother's room, but he's s filthy they're prolly afraid. maybe f he has mice, he's start cleaning up.

local rodents like dried seafood. dried cuttlefish/squid works the best coz its really pungent. its a box trap, so afterwards, dad will put it in the pail and fill with water to drown it. My dad learnt that was the easy way. (I told him so but he wouldn't listen to me. The first time he poured hot water. It made so much noise! it was incredibly incredibly cruel. But maybe thats what dad remembered they did in the old days where people killed their own chickens so it was ok. but next time he just drowned them.)

It's sad, coz they're very cute, but we live in a urban area and if we let them go, they'd just come back or go to someone else's house.

an idea is to keep them as a pet? I used to have pet mice as a kid...

[tangentgirl]

an idea is to keep them as a pet? I used to have pet mice as a kid...

I dunno. Wild mice could carry disease. Mice from stores are (hopefully) raised in a clean healthy environment.

[OakLeaf]

LOL, my first husband, even more of a bleeding heart than myself, kept a mouse he'd trapped as a pet for a while. I don't actually know what happened to it eventually, but I know it never became tame. (It's possible that he let it go before moving in with his new wife, who has 8 cats.) Not much of a pet that you can't clean its cage without a risk of being bitten. :cool:

[channlluv]

Knot's trick with the tissue box worked. Thanks, Knot!

We ended up with three different kinds of traps, plus the poison. None of them seemed to be effective (no mouse carcass apparent), and all was quiet for three or four days. I was starting to wonder if the poison had worked and I was wondering when the smell would settle in, but DH told me yesterday when he got home from work, the mouse was in the trap in the tissue box.

I'd set the trap, then put the mousenip poison on the other side, farthest inside the box. The mouse would have to go over the trap to get to the chewstick, and then we took all the other bait away except for what was actually in the other traps. If he wanted the chewstick, that one in the tissue box was his only option. Success. He went for it.

As for keeping mice as pets, no. I had to explain to DD why we had to get rid of him. She was all for making a little house for him and stuff - she's 11. She does not know he died in the trap, and I don't think we'll tell her.

Thanks for the tips, everyone.

Roxy

[Russel Mark]

Use mouse killer tablet and put in any sugar box and when mice come shut the door.

[MommyBird]

My kids are past the small rodent age now but we had our fair share. Most of the little furry guys are all buried in the back yard. One or two went out with the trash.
We had at least six pet store mice and they were delightful little pets. The cages are a pain but their little personalities are worth it.
We had two Gerbils.
Gerbils are a bit anti-social and hamsters are so popular the stores are usually sold out. My kids decided against hamsters after spending time with their friends'. Hamsters just were not as much fun as mice.
Cooper was our favorite. he was a little runt with allergies and he sneezed all the time. He loved to be held and he would close his eyes and lean in when you rubbed his cheeks. We honored him by giving his name to our Jack Russel.

If you think your daughter could handle cage duty, I would go for a pet store mouse. Mice are super cheap but the cages can get expensive and you have to replace their bedding often. A glass tank is the best cage option. You can get toys that sit in the bottom. A wheel without slots is a must. TP rolls are a favorite.

I'll share my country living mouse experience later.

[channlluv]

Thanks, but no. Every time we walk into our local Petco, that rodent smell assaults my senses...I swear I don't know why they think that's a selling point for anything. Mommy doesn't do the rodent thing. They're welcome out in the flower bed. Not inside my house.

DD has to be reminded to clean the litter box, which is in her room. I wonder sometimes if her sense of smell has been diminished from living in close proximity to her cat.

Roxy

[Lex87]

I once had a similar experience with a monster spider. It just keep on appearing and scuttling across my carpet and I swear I could see it every once and a while lurking just at the corner of my eye. I never did outwit and catch the little bugger but it's been a few months since his last appearance.

[bcipam]

Thankfully vermints have a short life span. Most don't live more than a few months. The problem with mice is they can multiply.

Don't have to tell you make sure there is nothing the mouse can use or get into... particularly paper goods which a mouse likes for nesting materials. You can also try and close up all the holes or spaces the mouse can use but just know he can eat through it.

I used to think mice were cute but now with some of the diseases they carry, it's best not to have them inside.

Last and best option, adopt a cat (someone may have suggested that already). Cat owners seldom have problems with mice, spiders or any bugs!

[lph]

well.... in summer we have the greatest mouser in the neighbourhood - up at my in-laws cabin in the mountains she averaged 6 to 10 mice a day for weeks - but she'll still happily bring them in, alive and kicking, with a mrrr? look what I brought home for you too to play with, you lucky people!

And kazam, we have a mouse or two or three under the bookshelf.

But no, they don't come in of their own accord, that's true.

[redrhodie]

well.... in summer we have the greatest mouser in the neighbourhood - up at my in-laws cabin in the mountains she averaged 6 to 10 mice a day for weeks - but she'll still happily bring them in, alive and kicking, with a mrrr? look what I brought home for you too to play with, you lucky people!

And kazam, we have a mouse or two or three under the bookshelf.

But no, they don't come in of their own accord, that's true.

How economical of her to make her own toys!

[OakLeaf]

My experience with cats is that they just drive the mice further into the walls. Not where you want them.

[tulip]

I was doing laundry a few weeks ago and just happened to look in the washer before I started putting clothes in. Usually I just open the lid and start stuffing clothes in. This time I looked, and thank goodness! There was a mouse in there. A dead one. It had not been washed. I have no idea how it got in because the top was closed.

[Owlie]

We found a rat in our apartment last night. DBF and I were sitting on his bed when I saw it run past and behind some boxes. We left the room and shut it in, with an old towel in the gap under the door. We called the maintenance line, and they sent someone out at 10pm on a Sunday night with two glue traps and a promise that a pest-control person would be there in the morning. I was a little leery about using the traps--I didn't want the thing in my apartment, but I didn't want to condemn it to a slow death from starvation or to chewing its limbs off. (I didn't want to dispatch it myself, either). On the other hand, I didn't want to end up in a possible legal situation with the landlord.

For most of the rest of the evening, the thing kept pawing at the door, trying to get out, and running if it saw either one of us through the gap between the door and the frame. In doing this, it apparently got its tail caught in one glue trap, and managed to free itself. We'd baited the other with peanut butter per the instructions from the maintenance guy. It quite happily ate it, with its paws on the plastic sides of the trap. I guess I scared while walking past, because it got startled and got its paws stuck...and managed to free itself again. (I was secretly glad, actually.) It spent the night in DBF's room.

The pest control guy took a look around the apartment to see where it might have come in. There's only two places, and they'll be fixing those tomorrow. He said it was probably a recent arrival--to the point where we probably caught it on its way in--and the only one. He also noted that glue traps don't work on rats. He set up two snap traps and gave us instructions to call the landlord if got caught (as well as how to get rid of it). Half an hour later, DBF and I heard this intermittent shuffle-shuffle-thunk noise coming from from his room. We opened the door a crack. The poor rat had gotten caught in the trap, but had tried to get the peanut butter from the long side of the trap. Because of that, there wasn't enough force to break its neck, so it was slowly being suffocated. It was nearly dead when the pest control guy got there to pick it up, so we didn't have to put it out of its misery.

DBF and I felt terrible. We'd liked the idea of the snap trap because it's relatively quick, unlike poison or glue traps. I like rats--I sort of want a pet one, once I'm in my own place and not an apartment. I'm okay with the idea of dispatching lab rats, because you have to do it quickly and relatively painlessly. I don't bear the poor things any ill will, because they're just trying to survive. I know what wild rats tend to carry, and that in the final analysis, it was either me or the rat. This was just...wrong and unnecessary, somehow. :(