There once was a mouse. . .

We recently had a little critter visitor in our house. We discovered him a few weeks ago when we had tacos planned for supper. I had everything set out on the counter--ready for taco assembly--except the tortillas. I opened the pantry door, pulled out the package of tortillas and set them on the counter. That was when I noticed the small hole in the middle of the package and what looked like a chunk of tortilla missing. I first asked the kids if they had been messing with the tortilla package.

Then I opened the package.

Something had eaten a three-inch-wide circle through about six tortillas. And there were little teeth marks all the way around the circle. That's when I knew it wasn't the kids. And I promptly through the whole package of tortillas in the garbage.

Upon further inspection of the pantry I found little mouse droppings on pretty much every shelf. So I set out a mouse trap in the pantry but it didn't catch him the first night. I sent Dan out to Target to pick up some more traps since the only trap we had was from when we lived in Lincoln and had a couple of mice in our apartment. See, our house is only 7 years old so we really don't have any holes for the mouse to get in to the house (our best guess is he snuck in the garage door) so we were not prepared for any critters. Dan picked up a package of old-fashioned mouse traps (that was what some other guy in the aisle said worked best) and a package of the sticky traps (my mom has had success with those). I set them out on both levels of the house since I had also found evidence of the mouse in the laundry room and my food pantry downstairs.

The next morning there was nothing. So I picked up the sticky traps and put them away for the day so that no children would accidentally step on them. That night I put them out again.

Sunday morning I woke up and groggily walked to the bathroom. I couldn't really see much because I didn't have my glasses on but when I looked in the spot where I had left one of the sticky traps, I couldn't see it.

That's when I heard it. A flopping on the kitchen floor and a periodic whimpering. I put my glasses on and discovered our critter visitor!! Yeah!! He had gotten stuck on the sticky trap and had been desperately trying to free himself. In the process he had managed to drag himself and the trap about six feet. He had also lost quite a bit of hair attempting to remove himself from the trap.

I grabbed a plastic bag, scooped him up and sent him to his grave outside in the bitter cold in our garbage can.

Since I was pretty sure we no longer had any mice, I cleaned out the pantry and threw away pretty much everything that wasn't in a Tupperware container. I discovered that he had partially eaten through a caramel, a bag of chocolate chips, a bag of brown sugar and a package of hot chocolate. I also took all of the linens that were in that closet and promptly threw them in the laundry.

Since I've gotten rid of all the evidence the mouse left, I haven't seen any more. So I am hopeful that he didn't have any friends come to stay and that it will be at least another seven years before I see another one.