Faithful readers will remember that before our Thanksgiving trip to Kentucky, Toby had spotted a mouse in the kitchen

We had talked about different ways to get rid of the mouse.  Poison was out because of the dogs and the kids.  The sticky traps were considered but Toby didn’t like the idea of the mouse being trapped slowly and had heard some stories of the mouse chewing its leg off to get free (Snopes, anyone?)  So we decided that the best, most humane method to get rid of the mouse was to use the old-fashioned spring trap.  This would kill the mouse right away and if Ginger got her nose snapped while trying to eat the cheese, well then, maybe she won’t forage for food so much.  Toby’s main concern was that she didn’t want the mouse to suffer.

We finally bought the traps and Max was *very* excited to be working the traps.  I kept putting off setting the traps until I went to get the dogs some bones and I found a hole chewed through the plastic bag.  It was time for the mouse to go!

I showed Max how the traps worked and snapped his thumb under the bar (lightly).  We got the cheese out and melted it to the tab and then flamed all the metal to get the human smell off.  We set one behind the microwave and one behind the washer and went to church.

That night, Toby and I turned out all the lights and went to bed.  About 5 minutes after the lights in the kitchen were turned off I heard a **SNAP** .  I knew right away that the trap had been sprung.  I walked towards the kitchen and heard “squeak, squeak”.  The mouse was still alive!  I wanted to go back to bed and deal with it in the morning, but Toby did not want to have it chew its leg off (Snopes, please, somebody).  So we moved the microwave and there was the mouse, still eating the cheese, pinned under the bar across its back.

So I took the mouse filled trap outside and hit it with a shovel.  It stopped squeaking.  I threw the trap away with the mouse still in it.  Yuck!  I can’t wait to have some real walls again.