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

[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.

[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