A Family of Mice

It's fairly obvious to us that there's a family of mice living in our attic.  We can't keep up with their procreating, although we are doing our best to try.

Last night - after that horrible night of listening to nesting noises and finally sleeping in the spare bedroom - DH went up into the attic with a plan.

Part 1 - Remove all of the insulation in the area where we most frequently hear the mice.

Part 2 - Relocate all of the traps to this area.

Part 3 - Cross our fingers for the sound of the "snap!"

The good news???

We caught one!! At around 4:20 this morning I was startled awake by a loud "snap" and then "thump."  My subconscious had apparently been waiting for that noise all night, because even though I was still mostly asleep I exclaimed "Yay!!!" and woke up DH in the process.  He was like, "Huh? What happened?"  And I, now full awake, responded, "We caught a mouse!"  I'm pretty sure that the trap snap so quickly that it shot up into the air and then landed on the bare wood just above the dry wall, which is why it was so loud.

I was thrilled that we had caught a mouse, and my sleep was pretty much ruined after that (I've been having a horrible time sleeping lately.)   The bad news is that in the hour or so after that first mouse was caught, I heard the pitter patter of another one, in the same area, probably coming to see what had happened to Uncle Mickey.  (Hahahaha! He's GONE sucker!)  I listened intently for another snap, but this mouse did not take the bait.  Damn.

Then this morning when I was getting ready for work I heard the same pitter patter and digging noises on the other side of the house, above our living room.  Damn again.  We will never win.

Anyway, about our plan that I mentioned above.  Removing the insulation might sound like a stupid idea - after all, we're probably just wasting heat since it's still pretty cold at night.  But you have to understand that we are desperate people taking desperate measures, and it's only for the short term.  Our hope is that we can kill the mice that are there now, and then no new ones will come.  (We can dream, right?)

My thinking is that right now, even when we kill a mouse or two, there are a bunch of other family members still up there inviting their aunts, uncles, in-laws, and second cousins to join the party in this awesome house!  Kill the messengers and the word won't get out.  That's my plan.

DH's plan is a little more practical.   Once we feel we've killed most of the mice, he's going to re-insulate the section of the attic and secure floor boards down.  He's going to take every measure possible to make sure that the area under the floor boards (the area above our bedroom) are air-tight and completely mouse proof.  We'll probably have to repeat that for the next 20 years of our life until we can do that for the entire enormous, currently useless attic.

So we caught one mouse, and every dead mouse is a good thing, right?  That's the good news.

The bad news?  DH discovered that our roof is leaking and we're going to need to replace that asap.  More on that story later.  But I have to ask myself, Does the drama in our lives never end?