Confused by the picture are you? Well, good. You should be.
Let me explain. Here in this fabulous city of Philadelphia we have seemed to encounter a bit of a mouse problem, and by problem I mean they are taking over our house. Okay, okay, so we've only seen them twice, but their presence is well noted by hollowed out loaves of bread, chewed up plastic baggies, and an occasional scamper across the bathroom floor, all of which have been equally disturbing. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and reclaim our house. (Note: you should know there are few things I HATE more than mice. Spiders: no problem. Snakes: I can handle them. Ear wigs: gross, but I can deal. Mice, nope, can't do it! Disgust, fear, and invasion are the range of emotions I feel when I have a mouse encounter. Perhaps its because when I was a child I found a dead mouse (that had fallen prey to my dad's trap of D-CON) in the middle of my room one morning. As a kid, that kind of thing can traumatize you for life, and in my case it did.)
Step 1: How do you kill a mouse?Well thanks to the handy guys down the street, and their rodent knowledge, we were provided with the "gold standard" of mouse traps.
We immediately set the trap in our bathroom and awoke the next morning successful. We caught the mouse. We breathed a sigh of relief and resumed normal activity, no more barricading the vents and shoving towels under our doors; we were safe, or were we? A few days later another unpleasant visitation of a furry friend was noted.
Step 2: Get ANOTHER trap.The results of step 2 were not nearly as quick as the results of step 1, but were they ever more dramatic. My roommate and I came home from a weekend in Boston only to find our bathroom was the scene of a murder, yes, a murder, and a messy one at that. Blood had splattered all over the tile and up the wall. My immediate reaction was to grab my toothbrush and sleep at someone else's house that night. But the interesting part about this homicide scene was that there was no victim, or trap to be found--just blood. Confused, my roommate and I began to cautiously search around for a half-dead mouse and his trap. In the process of the search I found the bag with the new slip I had just bought (and conveniently forgotten to take on the trip to Boston-the whole purpose for buying such a slip in the first place). However, tucked in with the slip I noticed a piece of wood. "Ugh, Amber," I stammered, "I think I found the trap." I was not about to dig through the bag to discover whether or not there was the trap and the mouse nestled in my slip, in fact, we were so grossed out by the findings we left immediately.
Step 3: We need a hero.After abandoning our findings, my roommate and I went down the street to the guys house and told them of our terrible encounter. They, of course, were unsympathetic to our plight. "You guys are dramatic." "Its just a mouse," they responded. Sure, sure, they say that now, but if their bathroom was covered in rabies-tainted mouse blood, they'd be singing a different tune, guaranteed. So after some mild convincing, and pretty intense begging, we found our hero to locate and dispose of this hemorrhagic mouse. We, of course, stayed put far down the street at the guys house while Ben went back to the crime scene to investigate.
Step 4: Found!Ben located said slip bag, and bravely began to peer a little more closely into its contents. As he did so he found, tangled in a sea of slip, with one extremity pinned to the trap, the mouse. The mouse was indeed alive, but moving rather slowly as you can imagine with one limb stuck to a big would block, the other caught on a silky slip, and all the while he was slowly bleeding to death from his trap wounds. We had given Ben strict instructions to dispose of the mouse and get it as far away from our house as possible. Easy enough, right? With the bag, slip, mouse, and trap in tow, Ben vacated the premises looking for a dead mouse receptacle. Now you're thinking, "Great, problem solved." Oh, if it were only that easy. You see, Philly has some of the most narrow streets and little row houses stacked on top of each other, leaving no room for garbage cans, nope not a one on the entire street. So Ben, feeling a little anxious to dispose of this dying mouse, makes an executive decision, and throws this piece of trash where everyone else throws their unwanted trash--an empty construction lot in between houses.
He flung that mouse and slip combo into the air, over the chain-link fence, to its final resting place on a muddy mound of earth next to other random bits of Philadelphia garbage. So if you're ever in Philadelphia walking along about 20th St. and Clymer St. glance over at the small construction site and there you will find my slip and a dead mouse. (If you look closely at the above picture you will see our protagonist, the mouse, stuck to his trap, and yes, that is my slip)
Step 5: Lessons learned.Buy d-CON instead.
