01.01.70
It all started a few weeks ago when I noticed a box of cookies in our pantry with a few cookies missing. This in itself was not all that unusual. With three kids in the lodgings, I’m lucky if I ever see a cookie. But this package had a small hole ripped in the side and a microscopic trail of crumbs heading toward a hole in the wall. I’m no Columbo, but I suspected mice.
I’ve dealt with mice before, chiefly by setting traps. But traps are a pain. Before they go off, I have to worry about some unsuspecting dearest member getting snapped. After they go off and there’s a mouse in there, I have to worry about my wife find it before I do. The screams can be heard two towns over. Glasses in our china cabinet could destroy.
So this year, I decided to put out poison bait. Poison is easy, and it does the job. But it has, I found, one notable drawback. Mice eat the bait, wander off and drop dead.
The muddle is they don’t come out into the middle of the room, holding their stomachs, saying, “You polluted rat ... ” before keeling over. Instead, they wander off to some secluded spot before breathing their timid last breath. Often that spot is somewhere inside a baseboard, or under the floor. Over the next week or so, they occasion a stench that could make your teeth fall out. And the only way to find that spot would be to rip out a wall or two. Clearly, I had made a big get wrong.
Source: Post-Tribune