Catching Mice

Sorry readers, no photos on this post: read the title - that's why there will be no photos.

 

 

NorthernDaddy can't remember if the incident was shared on this blog, or if it only posted on Facebook, but a year or two ago, NorthernMommy and Daddy caught a mouse by accidentally smooshing it in the belt of the treadmill. It wasn't pretty, the mess that Daddy had to clean up was quite icky, and the treadmill hasn't ever run the same - but it makes for a funny story now!

 

The Treadmill Mousetrap comes to mind because, as the weather turns cooler, the mice are heading indoors. They are, in fact, losing their minds in their rush to find warmth and food. The most interesting one so far has been the mouse that Daddy saw running out of trunk of his car. It was early one morning when the mouse was spotted running from the trunk into the cabin of the car. Daddy had to get to work, so the mouse was not pursued. Daddy started the car, backed out of the driveway, waved to Toddler, and headed down the road. A few hundred feet later, the window started to fog up, so Daddy reached over and turned up the defroster fan. The next instant, there was a tremendous banging and thumping sound from under the dashboard. Switch the fan off. There's a scratching/scritching sound in the vent, but the windows are fogged too much to see and there's a car coming, and the fan gets flipped back to high. More car-shaking thumping - no more scratching.

 

Daddy has a real good idea that the mouse he saw two minutes earlier has just been ground into pulp inside his heater fan, but there's not much he can do about it. For three days. Only cold air will come through the vents, and the air inside the car takes on a wet dog/dead mouse/gag-me-with-a-skunk kind of odor. Every time Toddler gets into the car, he asks if he can help get the dead mouse out of the car. Finally, on the fourth day, there is time. The entire passenger side dash is dismantled, the fan is removed, and the dead, mangled body of the dead mouse is pried out of the 'squirrel cage' of the heater fan. Ick.

 

Toddler is fascinated with the dead rodent, and has made it his job to patrol the mouse traps set throughout the house and garage. If he spots a tripped trap, he happily announces "We got another one!" Yup, that's one twisted kid that the Northerns are raising!

 

(NorthernDaddy has set a trap inside his car, and has been catching an average of two mice per day for the last few days. No idea where that many mice are living in the car!)