The game of mouse trap!

**This is a really long and wordy post. I usually don't write much, but you have to hear this story...

Upon returning from Yellowstone we found that we had a new resident in our home...a mouse! If you really know Ty and I, you know that we are total GERMAPHOBES! How could this happen to us!? And this wasn't just any mouse, he was the sneakiest, pickiest, smartest, most curious mouse ever! He had a hay day in our empty house while we were gone for a week. He was so curious! He left his mark (aka droppings) EVERYWHERE. Talk about gross, right!? Especially with our Addie, we were more than disgusted! We were exhausted after the trip, but were up to the wee hours of the night deep cleaning and sanitizing. I thought we had a full family of mice based on the amount of droppings we found. It was bad!

So we bought a bunch of snap traps and set them with peanut butter as bait. Everything I read (thank you Google) said that would be the most successful tactic. A few nights went by and no luck. Sanitizing was a daily task as each morning we found more droppings, but no mouse. This mouse would eat part of the peanut butter without setting off the trap! Sneaky little bugger!

We changed our action plan and got the sticky traps. Again, set them with peanut butter and again no luck. It had seemed that this guy had changed his nesting location to avoid the traps. Smart move! After moving around traps for a few nights and still no luck, I was ready to look for a new place to live.

But then...YouTube saved the day! Forget Google! Ty found a video of a homemade mouse trap. We were determined that this would get our mouse. Ty went to work and built this bad boy...

The idea is that the mouse is led up the wood plank by minimal bait. The good stuff is on the water bottle (hanging on a dowel across the bucket). When he walks onto the water bottle to get the food, the bottle rotates on the dowel and the mouse falls into the bucket (which is filled with water) and drowns. Genius, right?!

We left this out in our kitchen for 2 nights and still NOTHING! We learned that our mouse was a Picky eater! Even though everyone says peanut butter was the best bait, our biggest problem was that he didn't like it! Apparently mice don't have a strong sense of smell so you are supposed to attract them with food that has a strong scent. We loaded up our trap with whatever we could find that had a strong smell. It consisted of: vanilla extract and maple syrup along the plank, toffee, graham cracker, chocolate syrup, and chocolate ice cream (can you tell we were doing this while eating dessert?) all along the water bottle.

The next morning Ty went out to check and we caught our little chocolate lover! YES!!! I feel no remorse for drowning this mouse. None at all! The trap was left out for several nights (don't worry...dead mouse removed) and no others were caught. No more droppings were found. I cannot tell you how happy I am to be mouse free!

p.s. We aren't dirty people, several of our neighbors had mouse problems at the same time. It was seriously attack of the mice around here!