Mousecapades

Some mice decided to come in out of the cold and live in our upstairs. (Our upstairs is a quasi-attic. We have a cape, so the upstairs was once and will again be living space, but right now we just threw down some insulation on the floor and have a few items stored up there... so it's acting as an attic.)

Every night, we heard the scrambling and running of little feet... and gnawing? So it was time for action.

The husband has had most of the fun with the mousecapades. He bought traps and bait, and set them. The first night, he was obsessed with them. (Traps!) Every time he heard a noise, he ran upstairs to see if he'd caught anything.

About 2am, he did. Now, he bought two of those traps that hide the dead carcass so you don't have to witness what you've done. But the husband wanted to see... and when he did, he squealed. In case you are faint of heart, I will not relay what he saw. Since this time, he has been much less enthused about the process.

Two nights ago, trap number two went off. These suckers pack quite a punch - apparently it flew several feet across the room. From downstairs, we heard a random "pop!" ... husband waited until the next day to actually go retrieve the trap.

I might feel a little sorry for the critters... but at some point in the last week, they got into my diaper bag, which I store in the stairwell to the upstairs. And they nibbled everything in the bag - a juice box, a book, diapers... and a brand new footie outfit for the small child. So they are now my archenemy. And they must die.

How did that get there?

I was cleaning up the kitchen and I had an empty bottle of creamer, so I stepped outside and tossed it into our recycling bin.

Then my children finished both the lemonade and the juice, so I had two more bottles for the recycling bin. I walked over to it and put them in and...

there was a dead mouse lying in the bin.

This is not something you expect to find in your nearly-empty recycling bin. I haven't seen any mice, live or dead, since we moved in. No mouse poop, no mouse noises, no mice. And now there was a dead one inexplicably lying in my recycling bin. Some water was in the bin... did it drown? It was about a millimeter of water. If it didn't die in the bin... who put it there? There's a random cat who wanders through our yard...

I need my daughter to get her magnifying glass out and look for clues, because I'm baffled.