With three teeth, does that mean he'll have to just talk it into leaving instead?

[apocalypsos]

Me: Okay, Otis, I'm going back to bed. *dives into bed*
Otis: *yowling even more so than usual considering I just had to get up to feed him because he wouldn't leave me alone, pacing back and forth in front of the TV stand*
Me: Uh, are you doing that for the reason I think you're doing that?
Otis: *yowls and peeks behind the TV stand*
Mouse: *peeks out*
Me: Oh, wow, we have a mouse! And you're chasing it! *jumps out of bed* Ooo, catch it, Otis!
Otis: *yowls happily and runs over to wind between my legs*
Mouse: *scurries off through the office*
Me: *headsmack*

Now I don't want to go back to sleep because God only knows the mess I might find on my carpets when I wake up. If Otis and his three teeth can tear his toy cow to shreds given enough time, I'd hate to think what he'll do to some poor mouse I'd much rather just catch and dump out in the yard behind the apartment building.

The funny thing is my parents currently have a mice problem as well. You know, the people with the six cats. Apparently the cat most excited about this development is Spencer, the most friendly one, who's small and compact and really just built like the Siamese version of a terrier. He's being very professional and serious about the whole thing as if he's secretly been studying mice his whole life and now he has a chance to put his master's degree in mice to good use. Spencer's been spazzing because they won't let him catch one, probably because the only cat who has caught a mouse in the past is Owen, and really, who wants to be one-upped by the biggest dork you know?

So, yeah. Now I have to go buy a mouse trap. Greeeeeat.

EDIT: Aaaaand I just remembered that Otis is probably doing me a favor waking me up this early, because the Steamtown Marathon is going to run past my house in about a half an hour in all of its noisy irritating glory.

Comments

[scary-being-me.livejournal.com]

The problem with releasing the mice outside is that they just come back in.

We had a mouse problem when I was a kid. The problem with a traditional mouse trap is that once it kills a mouse; no other mice will go near it. I'm told it has something to do with the smell a dead mouse leaves behind; but I never looked into it.

My father's solution was to build a better trap. He took a 3"x3" piece of square duct, closed at one end, and put a trap door in the bottom of it. The door was balanced so if a mouse stepped on it, it fell through, then the door closed again. He put it in the basement on top of a five gallon bucket with a stick leading from the floor to the open end of the duct. In the closed end of the duct; he put a mixture of benut butter and oatmeal.

It ended the mouse problem quickly. Of course, we had to be careful my sisters didn't see us flushing the mice.