The Mouse Master

I live most of my days in North Bend Washington. This is where my boyfriend lives. He has a house on the south fork of the Snoqualmie that he is remodeling. It's going from 1500 square feet to 4300 hundred square feet due to a timber frame addition(s). It will be fabulous! Someday......

Right now we live in a disorganized mess, you can set something down only to have it disappear an instant later. There are piles of trash and wood everywhere. We also have new critters to go along with the dog and three cats, mice and rats.... many many of them.

It started about a year ago. The dog would be sound asleep in the living room when all of a sudden she would leap to her feet and roar into the bathroom. She would skitter across the floor, barking and snarling, scattering rugs in her wake. It was disturbing! Is she crazy? What the hell? We would go in the bathroom and see and hear.... nothing.

This went on for months and we did nothing. My poor dog was trying to tell us something and we weren't listening closely enough. Then one day I was,ahem, using the facilities when I heard what sounded like a monster trying to claw its way out from under the sink. I got Mark and we stood in the bathroom listening, there it was! Claws! So we knew Lola was right, there were creatures in our walls.

I am a dog trainer by trade and resolutely refuse to kill these creatures. Afterall I have a few dogs who aren't as smart as these creatures seem to be. Mark? he's just too tenderhearted, shhh don't tell I told. I have been on a mission to rid us of these tiny guests. I've done research about the inner workings of the mouse mind, sprinkled flour like pixie dust all over the house looking for tiny footprints and stuffed steel wool in every crack and crevice.

Still they lurk....

We open a wall and pounds of dog food fall out. We plug one hole and find another. We trap them, the one pictured is a pack rat, drive them across the river and they return. I've threatened to tag them all with nail polish, convinced we are trapping and releasing a family of four, to no avail.

Until the "The Mouse Master"

It's a strange looking box with two compartments and a hole between the two. The mice go into the hole and a paddle wheel flips them into a "escape proof" compartment. We caught six our first two days. It seems to work, but at night I sometimes think I hear tiny little mouse giggles as they return from their trip across the river