Two and a Half . . . MICE?!

It has been a week, boy oh boy! Thursday two weeks ago, our friend Kelly contacted us to say she had finally been offered a job (after graduating in May), and it's right here in Minneapolis! She was in town for some intense apartment hunting because she started work last Monday! She ended up not really finding a good deal for how long she'll be here, so we offered her our 2nd bedroom (which we had been using as our office/storage room). We're excited to have a roommate, especially one as easy-going as Kel! It's going to really help us cut costs for the coming months. And now I have a girlfriend to hang out with!

So Kelly went home and was to arrive at our place on last week Sunday evening. We got up Sunday morning and started clearing out and cleaning up the spare bedroom. Along the floor under the radiator I noticed this row of little black pellets... I asked Dave what the heck they were.. And before he could answer, I found a scattered mess of them under a table next to our futon and Dave said, "I found more over here under my golf bag. They're mouse turds." *MOuSE TURDS?!?* I thought...! So I got the vacuum out and started to clean up the little mess. We figured there had been a mouse going from apartment to apartment or something like that. We live in a super nice complex, so we thought it was weird to find mouse droppings, but we also live on the first floor so we understood that a mouse could get in and float around.

As we were talking about all these theories and trying to rationalize, Dave pulled out the futon so we could vacuum the rest of the carpet and lifted up the lawn chairs we had under it, we were absolutely sickened to see literally hundreds, maybe even over a thousand, mouse turds all over the place! It was like a little next almost, with paper scraps and shiny things. I screamed, Dave dropped the lawn chair and jumped back. We are both grossed out by mice!

Dave looked at me and said, "I think this is from more than one mouse................." **EEEK!!**

We immediately went to get some traps then stopped by our apartment office to let the managers know what was going on. Unfortunately the exterminator only comes in once a week and wouldn't be back in til Wednesday. We told them we'd still set the traps in hopes to catch the one or two mice that were going around. We didn't expect to catch anything, but we used peanut butter and set up 4 traps in the areas we found the turds. We put one in Kelly's room under her bed, 2 in the livingroom and one in the kitchen. Kelly arrived about 10 minutes after we set the traps...but we didn't say anything about the traps. Didn't think it was a big deal and we just wanted the exterminator to come to bait the mouse!

We three went out to dinner and made it home and in to bed by about 10pm. Dave and I were on our computers in bed and all of a sudden we heard: *Snap! Snap!!* TWO TRAPS went of literally within seconds of each other. I pushed Dave out to go look at the traps.. One had been set right by our deck door, but when Dave went to check it, the trap was GONE! Freaked us out! So we pulled out all the furniture in that corner of the room and finally found the trap, but only found HALF of the mouse!!!!!! Yeah, half. Sick, hey? SO Gross! We luckily had the whole mouse in the other trap. We looked at each other and, even though we couldn't find the top half of one mouse, agreed we did a good job and were glad we could tell the exterminator we got the mice.

We crawled back into bed closer to midnight, after cleaning up the messes, and drifted off. At about 12:58am, **SNAP!** The kitchen trap went off. I heard it and rolled Dave out of bed again. He said it was a bigger mouse, that the first two appeared to be babies or younger mice. This one was bigger (and whole). Two and a half mice caught within 3 hours; caught within 6 hours of SETTING the traps. Pretty scary, but we felt better going to sleep with three less mice in our apartment.

Here's a video of Dave checking the hole in the radiator on the other side of the wall (in our room) to make sure the mice weren't coming in and out of that hole, too. I had already played this trick on Dave before I got the brilliant idea to record it. Let me just say the first time was a ton better. He yelled out, jumped and got really angry at me and said "Don't mess around! I hate mice!!" hahaha :D

Monday morning rolled around and Kelly left for work. Dave went in to peek under her bed. Again, the trap was GONE! "What the heck! Elise, you are NOT going to believe this. These traps are not killing these mice!" We couldn't find the trap right away. We pulled all the furniture and suitcases from the walls and finally found the trap after 20 mins of searching, but again with only part of the mouse in it. Who knows what time that trap went off, but poor Kelly! We were worried she heard it go off, and right under where she was sleeping at that!

We contacted the apartment managers and the sent over maintenance to seal up a hole hear the heater where the mice were maybe coming and going. Dave and I went to Target for more traps. We set them up that night, and guess what. It all happened again! All of them went off that night! I won't go into all those details again, but very similar to the first night. We reset two of the traps. This time we set one in our room instead of Kelly's. Around 2am the one in our room went off. Dave and I were so startled that the first thing I remember is looking over at him sitting up straight in bed and noticed I was doing the same, heart racing. The trap was literally inches from our bed. He removed the mouse and reset the trap in the same place.

The next day was Wednesday, when the exterminator finally came. It didn't seem that he did much, but the note he left us when we got home that evening said he "removed mouse and set trap." No clue what that meant, whether he took a mouse out of one of our traps and reset it, or if he set a bait trap to clear out their nest, who knows..

When we got home from work and school, we checked the trap. Yeah, we WISH it was where we left it, but nope. It was GONE. *Sigh* Again, like the times before, we moved everything around looking in every crevice that it could possibly go. Couldn't find it. Days went buy. Many days, about five. Finally, last night, I was emptying out a mesh hamper of clean clothes and the further I got down, I noticed the clothes were smelling really dirty. Now, to be honest, it was Dave's underwear and socks, so I rationalized it as maybe they missed the wash or need to go through again. But then, I picked up the last few items and at thru the bottom of the mesh bag I saw the freakin' trap! I threw the clothes who knows where and ran out of the room to get Kelly to help me. Dave was out studying for finals with his buddies not to be home for hours. It was so gross. I'm totally washing that entire hamper of clothes again! EW!! We're thinking the trap got caught somehow on the hamper so even when we moved it around, we didn't find it. So gross! I think if the mouse hadn't decomposed over those many days, then we may have never found it. EW!

So now we're at present day, you're brought up to speed on our mouse situation. Our total is 10 mice that we caught personally, not sure if there were more with the exterminator. A few more than 1 or 2.. :S We're going to pick up more traps tonight, just to be sure we got them all.. If any more happens with this, we'll keep you posted. Hope you weren't too grossed out by reading all of this. And sorry to Chris who slept on the floor in the spare bedroom last month!

Off to run some errands now, then to work! It's going to be a beautiful day in the entire state today! High 80's and sun sun sun! Can't wait to go for a walk or maybe some pool dwelling for a change! :) AND I will get my husband back after today! His last finals are today. We're getting excited to celebrate our 1 Year Anniversary in a couple weeks. My mom and brother will be in town this weekend. August is going to be the best!!


Love, E