There is a critter in my basement. I'm guessing it has been there about a month. In my defense, I thought it was gone. Twice. And I was gone for eight days and didn't want to risk trapping it and having something rotting down there.
The saga started the day that I got a new garage roof and my neighbor got a new roof on his house. You can imagine the pounding and noise and general disruption of the area. I unlocked my front door after work to find a mouse munching on chocolate that I'd brought back from Germany and my cat watching the mouse nibble on the candy bar. We all stared at each other for a few seconds and the mouse ran and the cat had a "who, me?" look on his face.
I set some traps and never saw the mouse again. But I did come home several days later to find a banana eaten THROUGH THE PEEL and and a box of strawberry PEZ flavored popcorn (purchased at a dollar store ten years ago - I can't imagine that it was even edible) shredded and open in the hallway. The war was on! Don't screw with the PEZ collection!
I should mention the cat was home the whole time. I've changed his name from Felix to Pacifist Kitty.
I set a live trap in the basement with a spoonful of peanut butter. Nothing. One evening while I was home I left the back door (that leads straight to the basement) open in hopes of the critter running to its freedom. Several days when by with no action or droppings or footprints to be found. I assumed it was gone.
Wrong. Apparently it was still full from eating the mouse and the cat food and the PEZ and the banana.
All Hell broke loose while I was gone. The critter knocked over the cat food container, flipped the cat food bowl, chewed through several PEZ packages, opened cabinets, chewed through the clothes line in the basement, knocked over crates and pushed plastic storage containers off of shelves to get to the packages of PEZ.
I set the trap again. While I was a work yesterday the critter got in to my purse on the sofa. And helped himself to a pack of chewing gum!
I got a bigger live trap. Again, I don't want something dying in the crawl space. And I'm afraid of bullet ricochet.
3 comments:
Dear Nora, I do not want you to panic but it does sound like you have something bigger running with your mouse. We have had mice and never have they taken such large quantities much less getting into my purse. Perhaps you need to set up some video surveillance. Yikes! Plus a better name for you cat would be Woosie.
We had someone in our house last night. When I got home, all the doors were closed, our crockpot was moved, and the guest bed was made. They also locked our garage door. They moved my jewelery box, but took nothing from it. I WAS BEYOND FREAKED OUT. I'm not sure to feel lucky or embarrassed that someone broke in and CLEANED UP.
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