A Mouse-y Mystery; An Announcement

Every once in a while, we get a mouse in the house. Of course, it’s usually more than one—you know what they say: where there’s one mouse, there’s usually more. In the past, we’ve tried everything—live traps, sonic devices, a cat—and eventually, they stop coming around for a few months. We hadn’t seen any sign of a wee rodent since last winter, but a week and a half ago, Ken and I were standing in the kitchen talking and suddenly Ken interupted me with, “Look! A mouse just ran across the floor and disappeared under the cupboard!”

We have an old postmaster’s cupboard in the corner of the kitchen that we use for a variety of things, but in the bottom we store Atlas’s food in the right-hand side, and rice and a rice cooker on the left-hand side. Ken opened the left-hand door, which is where the mouse seemed to have disappeared into, and there was no sign of it. But the bags of rice had obviously been chewed into, and there was mouse sh*t on my rice cooker.

As you may remember, we gave up on live traps when it became obvious that the mice had figured out how to get the peanut butter without getting stuck in the trap, and as much as I hated to do it, we went out the next day and bought one of those snap traps. Ken slathered it with peanut butter, much to Atlas’s delight, because that meant he also got some peanut butter (Why? Because otherwise, he would pout and complain), and then Ken slid the trap very carefully under the rice/dog food cupboard with me all the while repeating, “Careful, careful!” in case it snapped his finger off. The next morning, we came downstairs and sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap. It was a late mouse and it made me sad. We repeated the same steps two more times and caught two more mice. But then…

On Thursday morning, I came down for breakfast.

Me: Did you check the mousetrap?
Ken: Oh, not yet, I forgot. Hang on. (*gets down on hands and knees to peer under the cupboard*). Uh…
Me: What’s wrong?
Ken: The mousetrap is gone.
Me: What are you talking about? How can it be gone?
Ken: I don’t know, but it’s gone.
Me: But…the whole mousetrap?!
Ken: I know. Maybe the mouse’s tail got caught and it dragged it somewhere else?
Me: I don’t hear any squeaking.
Ken: Maybe it got free.

So we spent a lot of time on Friday searching for the trap to no avail. It has completely vanished. And I know there are a lot of places in any house where a mouse might disappear into, but a whole mousetrap??!! It’s kind of terrifying, to be honest, like where could it possibly have gone?! And now, I have no mousetrap, and potentially a mouse with magical powers, half a tail, and a thirst for revenge. Wish me luck.

In other news, I’m happy to announce on behalf of DarkWinter Press that our second publication, the novel The Dogcatcher by Sean Patrick Carlin, will be available for pre-sale starting tomorrow! It’s an awesome book if any of you are looking for a fun, spooky, and cleverly funny fall read and it’s available to order here!

53 thoughts on “A Mouse-y Mystery; An Announcement”

  1. Once we had a mouse who was a genius at extracting the bait from the traps without tripping the bar. Day after day, we’d inspect the traps and see the cheese gone with the trap un-triggered. This went on for maybe a couple of weeks. Finally, one day I saw the mouse moving across the garage floor. He was moving slow, as he appeared to be so overweight from eating so much cheese that his little mouse body was swaying back and forth as he walked. The silver lining here was that we went out and acquired a cat from the shelter and got Tigger, who ultimately became the best cat we ever had–better, even, than everybody else’s cat.

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  2. Thank you, Suzanne, for all your creativity and support on this project! Later this week, I’ll be posting a (spoiler-free) behind-the-scenes account of the creative development of The Dogcatcher on my blog called “The Dogcatcher Unleashed,” for anyone interested in learning a bit more about the novel.

    As for your mouse mystery… I can recommend a good Animal Control Officer to come investigate the problem for you!

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  3. I became a master of mousetraps from a young age since they were a common problem where I grew up. Never snapped my finger once! Though none of our mice ever stole any of the traps either!

    That is one thing I don’t miss. Since I moved here and had the cat(s), I’ve only seen one mouse in the house in 14 years, and it had already been “taken care of.” I’ve heard that just the smell of cat urine is enough to deter mice, though spraying your house in that may not be the best solution….

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  4. So, I’m thinking a spy mouse went out, took your mouse trap, and then brought it home to be studied by mouse scientists to figure out how to destroy all of them–a kind of worst-case Pinky and the Brain scenario 🙂

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  5. Oh man, you have mice again? That sucks, I know how frustrating that can be it took me four months just to catch the one mouse I had in my house. Thank goodness since then I haven’t had mice issues. Now I’m wondering if the mouse had help carrying away the mouse trap?
    I am so psyched about your new press and the writers you’ve signed! I got your book, What Any Normal Person Would Do. I’m finishing my current book and wait to read it!

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  8. Our youngest dog Junko does something called “Barn Hunt” where she’s trained to find rats hidden among hay bales. The rats are in plastic tubes with mesh openings so they can breathe and also so the dogs can smell them. When Junko finds a rat she puts her paw on that spot. When she started putting her paw on our pantry door that’s how we knew we had a mouse in there. Maybe Atlas could be trained to do that. Keeping the mice out is the best option, though, but I don’t know how to do that. We caught the one and that seems to be the end of it.
    Anyway The Dogcatcher looks like a fun read! And a great way to support a small press.

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  10. Awesome blog post here. Firstly, the sense of humor here is impeccable, I really bursted out in laughter when reading about the mouse that disappeared under the cupboard😂😂😂😂, Oh no!!!! You are in for a ride there, better get rid of the mouse before it eats items in the cupboard.

    Lastly, I am glad to read about the second publication of the book titled “DOG CATCHER” by Sean, can’t wait to read that👏

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  13. Sorry to hear about the tail-less magical mouse-hulk bent on revenge. Eeek. Glad you caught a few of them anyway since they’re so hard to get rid of otherwise. I tried to preorder Sean’s book but ran into challenges with Amazon. I’ll keep trying. I can’t wait to read it! Congrats to Sean!

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  15. Had much issues in Colorado. I put everything in my pantry in containers… thick plastic because they can chew… anyway, after having to toss out food & replace it was easier to buy containers. We used the traps they go into & cant get out! Watch what they’ve been getting into & use that as their bait. We eventually had no issues for years, then we moved to.Arizona the field mice ate rats, lol. None in house but they live outside. I trim bushes so they don’t live/ nest in them.

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  17. Congratulations once again on the new book. And the mouse situation is well known to me from my old house apartment. For years I didn’t want to use snap traps. Little did I know that the snap traps would clear out the little devils in short order. Professionals came in ans set many traps around. One trap wouldn’t do it.

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