Mouse-capades

Written yesterday, March 16th - Blogger was giving me issues and I wasn't able to post it! Also, update coming later today.

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I had hoped that when I wrote my last mouse-related post a few weeks ago, it was truly going to be the last one.  I'm sick of dealing with - and writing about - mice, and I bet you're sick of reading about them.

But it appears that our mouse-capades are not yet over.

We'd been noticing occasionally that it seemed like the mice were back, but it wasn't too horrible.  A sound here and there, but it wasn't keeping us up at night.  We thought we had adequately covered their entrance point, but apparently they either found a new one, or that wasn't their entrance after all.  Then, DH found a dead mouse in one of the old traps that we had set back in January, and once we removed the body, apparently his family came en mass to protest.

Ever since the carcass was removed, the mouse noises have increased.*  A couple of nights ago DH put down some floor boards and positioned 4 fresh new traps each baited with a base of peanut butter and an additional tasty treat.  These treats included raisins, cheese popcorn, a crouton, and a dog treat.  The hope was that at least one of those treats would entice the mouse to die.  You know where this is going, right?

Last night, I woke up around 12:30 for the first of my nightly bathroom visits (which usually number around 2 or 3.)  At that time, I heard the mouse.  He was right above my bed and making crazy loud noises.  I would love to know what they're doing up there.  Can digging in insulation really be that fun?

Anyway, I tossed and turned for an hour and a half or so.  DH started becoming restless around 2 - probably because I was moving around so much.  At 2:30 I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to get a drink.  I had made the decision to sleep in the spare bedroom.  I figured that if DH didn't completely wake up, he might be able to sleep through it.  But apparently he completely woke up because a minute later he was coming out of the bedroom asking what I was doing.

He decided that he was going to up there and whack a broom around for a minute or two to try to scare the thing away.  I was stationed right under the mouse noise so that I could listen and hopefully hear which direction he ran so that we would have some guidance as to where they might be getting access.  But even with all of the racket, the mouse just stayed where he was and kept making noise.  Was he stuck?? That was my best guess, but I don't really believe that to be true, since even with the floor boards the whole attic is pretty much open.  But he was either stuck, or really fearless, and what could be worse than a fearless mouse????

So it was decided that we would all relocated to the spare bedroom for the night.  I have no idea what time it was by this point.  We went from sleeping soundly in our queen sized bed with the dog in his crate to a full sized bed with the dog in the bed with us (because he doesn't like being left alone in a room at night.)  It was a crowded bed, and I was so wide awake by this point that I had a really hard time getting to sleep.  I was on the wall side of the bed, so I couldn't see the clock, which is probably a good thing - I tend to be a clock watching when I'm restless and I'm sure that doesn't help with sleeplessness.

Eventually I drifted off and then what felt like 5 minutes later DH's alarm clock went off and he was up for the day.  I went back to my bed and put in an ear plug to wait for my own alarm to go off 30 minutes later.  After 40 minutes of snoozing I finally woke up.  Needless to say, I am soooooo tired right now.  I basically feel delirious.

I need suggestions people!  How do you get rid of mice in your attic!!?!?

We've tried:
- locating their entrance point (fail)
- traditional neck snapping traps (partial success -when they take the bait)
- pet-safe traps (fail - they just injured the mouse but it was still alive! So sad...)
- Light (fail - we figured mice are nocturnal, right?)
- Sonic pest emitters (fail - the mice are back, after all, and right next to one of the sonic things)

What we haven't tried yet:
- Poison (don't want the mouse to die up there and then start rotting and us not be able to find it)
- Glue traps (seems really cruel since they basically just starve to death or chew their limbs off, and I was traumatized enough by the pet-safe trap when the mouse didn't die, however, I'm really close to going this route to see if it works)

What are we missing?!? What can we try???


* No, I don't truly believe that the increased mouse noises are actually related to the removal of the dead mouse, but I like to take some creative license every now and then.