...I hate meeces...

...to pieces!

I keep a very clean house. No, really. I come from a long line of women who clean the house BEFORE the cleaning lady comes. My food is stored properly, dishes are cleaned promptly, and I don't eat all over the house.

I live in a small house that is perfect for me & Cody, The World's Least Scary German Shepherd. It's in a semi-rural area on 3 acres, and I love it. In the 15 years I've been in the NE, I've always lived on acreage in the woods, so I am used to "critters".

I understand odd pre-winter mouse sighting. I do not leap up on chairs and lift my skirts and scream. I don't mind frogs. I do mind snakes, but I deal.

I believe some major construction work to a house about 1/4 mile down the lane from me has resulted in a troubling invasion of mice.

Nothing, so far, has stopped them. I have tried:

HavAHart traps loaded with peanut butter. They're apparently making cold sesame noodle dishes somewhere, because the peanut butter is eaten, but the traps don't work.

Sticky traps. I think they're doing conga lines around the sticky traps. I accidentally got one stuck to my fingers and it was like a Laurel and Hardy routine to get it un-stuck, so I am certain that if a meece actually crossed the thing, it would stick.

I've located where they might be coming in (a crack in the cabinet floor under the sink) and have filled the crevice with the intarwebs-recommended steel wool.

I've also invested in Bounce fabric softener sheets. Do you have any idea how much those farkers cost? Allegedly, mice hate the smell, but I think the research on this is archaic, because now, there are about eleventy thousand Bounce scents. Which one is it that they don't like? Spring Breeze? Perhaps it's Renewing Rain or Paradise Thrill (what, exactly, is a Paradise Thrill, and how the fark do they know what it would smell like?) I searched for Mouse Death Vaporizer scent, but came up Bounce-less. I decided on Outdoor Fresh, hoping this will give the varmints a clue.

My next course of action will be mint leaves and essential oil of lemon. If all else fails, I'll add bourbon and drink it from a silver cup and I won't give a rat's (er...mouse's) ass about any of this.





After that, well...see below. It won't be pretty.