As I have mentioned before, we have mice. Not the nice little pet kind or even the kind that you feed to other pets. No, the wild invader unwelcome kind. Oreo utterly failed at mouse deterrence. The live trap apparently operated as an example of survival of the fittest and captured only the stupid ones. The glue traps the exterminator gave us failed utterly. Snap traps are useless. So, we finally turned to poison.
The type of poison we used is pellet form and is essentially an anticoagulant at a dosage massive for mice. For a while, I was convinced that all the mice actually had high blood pressure or abnormal blood clots and that we were just helping them out, because they were still merrily piddling behind (and on) the lower shelf of my bookcase and behind the TV. Or that, like some rats, they had become resistant.
Eventually though, all but one has departed. Whether this world altogether or merely our apartment, I don't really care.
The apartment had started to smell like an enormous hamster cage. (And I have now ensured that we will never have visitors again...) My allergies were going nuts. So, today, we decided to move the bookshelves and the TV and other furniture, use the ShopVac on the hardwood floor behind and thoroughly saturate the baseboards with Lysol. It seems to have gone pretty well. I've only had to trash a few old notebooks that were icky with vermin leavings. My throat did start to close up a bit near the end and I'm weak all over, despite having only moved books back and forth and dusted while Tom did all the actual heavy labor. I think it was worth it, though. I think we'll have another few rounds of spraying the baseboards with Lysol or Febreeze or vinegar (suggestions for removing that odor that don't involve killing all of us are welcome in the comments) and we've left bait and a mousey obstacle course just in case they mount a counter-offensive.
Image courtesy of Madprime, available at Wikimedia Commons
