Spooked by a Soap Bubble

This week there was a mouse in the house.  His presence was discovered upon my arrival home and finding nibbled bits of aluminum foil scattered across the counter.  The pesky rodent had tried to get to my made from scratch pumpkin pie.

I don’t know how long Lance (short for “pestilence”) had been in my house.  The scattered foil was the first obvious sign of him.

The first thing I did was to gather my snap traps together and set them with peanut butter.  Two traps and two hours later the peanut butter was gone and the traps hadn’t snapped.   I took this as a sign that I should not have taunted Lance with the words “come and get it” when I put the peanut butter on the traps.

I had to try again.  I set three traps with a little less peanut butter shoved deeper in the trap, and set them in prime spots.  In the morning these three traps were cleared of bait.

This was a wily rodent.

Before heading off to work I reset the traps.  When I came home, guess what?  Yep, the traps were cleared.  What mutant form of rodent was I dealing with?  Usually I nab the pests on the first try.  This one was becoming frustrating.

Coworkers and friends told me to get a glue trap.  I don’t like them because I think they’re cruel and inhumane but my frustration with Lance had reached its peak.  I didn’t want him to think he was becoming my pet and I was kindly giving him peanut butter treats so I went to the nearest store seeking a different trap.  I had hoped for the kind with the door but all they had was the inhumane glue trap.  I reluctantly bought it and took it home to set it out.

That night I was washing dishes.  Because of Lance I was feeling a little “paranoid” and was looking over my shoulder a lot.  When I turned back to my dishes there was movement to the left of my head which made me flinch.  To my embarrassment it was a soap bubble.  I was spooked by a soap bubble.

After work the next day I came home to find that the glue trap was missing.  Somehow Lance had managed to drag it 2 feet from where it had been.  He was on it but under the washing machine with only half inch of the corner of the trap sticking out in the narrow space between the washer and dryer.  I used a stick to try to pull the trap out, but the stick got stuck in the glue.  I pulled on the stick to get it out of the glue but the trap came up and it got stuck to the bottom of the washing machine.

The mouse squeaked.  I became frustrated.  And I admit that I actually got teary eyed that Lance was being tortured.  In the end, I got Lance out from under the washer and sent him to his end.  But I didn’t like the way it was done.  I hate glue traps.