My Pet Vermine:

If you were wondering about the secret of my Mouse Catching Success, it's partly experience with rodents from my youth (Mom conceded on her "no pet rule," and allowed a few gerbils over the years.) and partly the awesome tip-traps that I borrowed (permanently) from Eithni. These traps are quiet, safe for the dogs and the bebe, and super-easy to use... The only drawbacks are that you need to be vigilant after you set them, and check them several times a day, or they won't be humane, live traps anymore*, AND... Once you've caught a live mouse in the middle of winter... What do you do with it???

I'll show you what I did with the one I caught... I went out and bought it a Critter Keeper, a water bottle, some bedding, and proper rodent feed. That's what I did. Because I'm a big, fat softie. Well that, and having caught three four mice in the last two winters, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need a place to keep all the critters I catch in the future. Honestly, I'm sick of rigging biscuit tins to stay closed, without hermetically sealing and suffocating the mouse within. Last winter, my attempt to contain but not kill a mouse, resulted in an escapee that I then had to trap a second time. Took me a week to lull that wiser, more cautious mouse into a false sense of security...

Anyway, after I set up Paris in his/her new digs, I reset the mouse trap in the same spot, just to be sure. Last year we had a pair of mice, so I wanted to be certain that I'd caught all our guests... This morning, I heard chewing coming from the kitchen and went to check my trap. Son of a biscuit. The brown mouse is Hector - now installed with Paris in the mouse environment that is suddenly too small. I haven't yet had a chance to sex those little suckers because I was trying to leave the house to catch my bus to work when Hector made his appearance. It's a good thing the stupid bus was late, because I then had to bait and set the trap a third time because now I'm really not sure.

I hope to god that I don't catch a third mouse**, because I'm fresh out of places to put them until the ground thaws a bit and I can drive them to a park somewhere and let them loose. Alinore has offered me a habitrail that she is no longer using... Apparently it'll be just the thing I deserve for 12th Night. I guess it'll solve the problem of where to put the little guys when I'm trying to clean their cage - I just haven't worked out what I'm going to do for cage-cleaning time until then. I'm pretty sure I'll need to clean out the mouse-house several times before the middle of January.

*Dude. Someone remind me to put the trap away before I leave for Pittsburgh for the holiday...
**If you're wondering, a third mouse would be either Ajax or Helena, depending on gender. What else do you name the victims of an epic mouse-catching spree?