Mouse hunt 🐁

by Timo

Chapter II of the unwelcome guests:

At some point, we discovered small black crumbs in the house, similar to black grains of rice, but smaller. Although we had no previous contact with rodents, we immediately thought of mouse droppings and indeed, one evening a piercing scream came from the kitchen, 'Aaaaahhh! 😱 I think there's a mouse!' 🐭 Shortly afterwards, I saw it dart out of the corner of my eye. What now? It was clear early on that we wanted to catch her alive and then deport her. In a spontaneous move, I searched for ideas for a live trap and then constructed a trap out of a 10 liter plastic water jug and cardboard. The idea was to lure the mouse - we had meanwhile christened her Freddy - to the bottleneck via a cardboard ladder, where I had cut an opening into the bottle, into which a strip of cardboard protruded, which would tip due to the weight of the mouse, causing her to plop into the empty bottle. As bait, we smeared some peanut butter and chocolate cream on the 'plank'.

In the meantime, Freddy also boldly visited us in the living room in the evenings, and we almost cornered him behind a chest of drawers. However, he was incredibly fast. The self-built trap was only used once without success and Freddy continued to wreak havoc. One evening we discovered him behind the microwave, tried to catch him again, but he darted along the kitchen counter, made a huge leap to the floor, and disappeared behind the refrigerator.

We decided to buy a professional trap at the hardware store and took two green plastic live traps, and as a last resort - in case the cage traps didn't work - two classic mouse traps with a spring. Fortunately, the live trap worked perfectly, and the day before yesterday Freddy tapped into the green box after just one hour, then stepped onto a seesaw that closed the door behind him. In the morning, he sat engaged in personal hygiene and probably hungry in the trap, because the cheese bait was placed in such a way that the mouse can only smell it through holes. I felt sorry for him and warmed up a piece of cheese from the refrigerator and put it in his trap so that he could have breakfast with us in his 'deportation prison'. 😉

After breakfast, I took the trap to a field about 150 m away from our house and released him. He disappeared quickly into the undergrowth. I hope that out there he will escape the many cats, snakes, and falcons that are here. But who knows, maybe he will find his way back to the house and then we will adopt him.