Saturday, November 17, 2007

Freddie Mercury? Two Minutes Till Showtime, Sir.

Ba da bup, bup, bup, another one bites the dust!

I wish I could say the mice are dropping like flies, but with only two dead varmint under my belt, I'm far from being the "Great White Hunter". And no, I don't really keep the dead ones under my belt. I keep 'em under my pillow like any normal person would.

I'll put some of the blame on the traps. I've had no "real" success with the sticky-traps, although they've been a lot of fun for me to play with. Stick finger to pad, pull finger off pad and giggle at how sticky it is. Repeat.

The snap-traps I got are the TomCat line.



They kind of suck - in a bad way. Too many times I've checked the traps only to find them empty of peanut butter. They're super-easy to set, but require too much weight to set 'em off. I did find that if I stick the peanut butter WAY onto the back of the trap's lever and on the main spring that it forces the moue to really get far into the trap which hopefully increases my KPD ratio. That's "kills-per-day", for those of you who don't read Mouse Killer's Digest (honest, I buy it for the articles!). It's in all the finer book stores and WalMarts.

If (when) I find one more trap licked clean I'm going back to the hardware store to get some good ol' fashioned wood base spring-traps-of-death. Trickier to set, but it's hard to beat how well they work.

Maybe I should try some cheese in the traps. I haven't seen this brand before, wonder if it's good...



Somebody with lots of expensive tools has too much time on his hands.


UPDATE:
Score! One more mouse and one pilfered trap. I'm still making the call Jeff 3, Mice 0 (Since I'm not dead. Yet.)

UPDATE #2:
Overnight, one more mouse. It's a blood-bath! Well, not really. And those traps really suck worse than I expected. I was hoping the first mouse was just a mutant, but all three mice I've got so far survived the trap and had to be taken for a swim to finish 'em off. I've never had to do that with the old Victor board traps. I'm going to get a couple today before the Packer game:


Not because I feel bad for the mice, but because I don't want mice paralyzed from the waste down crawling around the house demanding better parking spots. Jeff 4, Mice 0.

UPDATE #3
Cue the Count from Sesame Street: 1 dead mouse! 2 dead mice! 3 dead mice, hahahahaha! 4 dead mice! 5! 5 dead mice! Let me count them again!



I also had a neighbor e-mail me this f'd up little gem of a picture:



Awwww yeah, shake that tail if you want me to call you again!

6 comments:

Smudgemo said...

Are those traps vegetarian?

Nathan said...

Aah! I have a question for the Mouse Exterminator Extrordinaire!

My roommate called me into her room last night because she heard something 'chewing'. I picked up her garbage can and out popped my very own little rodent. I've never seen someone freak out so irrationally! She did the cliche 'chick on top of chair' routine for about half an hour while I had to go through all of her boxes and purses looking for the damn thing. Which leads me to my question:

I really want that mouse dead & not paralized from the waist down (as parking at my joint's a little tight as is) but I know any sight of guts is going to make the roomie freak out. Is there much splatter with the victor traps?

I'll be checking back for an answer. Thanks!

Muskego Jeff said...

How much juice can a little mouse have in it? Put it on a napkin or paper towel if you need to. It's not that there will be blood splatter all over or anything like that. Unless you weld on a couple of little spikes, and use a stronger spring.... Actually you probably won't see any guts.

Don't tell her, but if you see one, there are probably a number more that you didn't see.

Jayne said...

You are sick & wrong, Jeff. Sick AND wrong. And I mean that as a compliment.

Muskego Jeff said...

"Sick" and "wrong" are a couple of my nicer qualities. :)

Muskego Jeff said...

Oh, and I'm up to 6-1/2 mice now. I count one who I saw limping away from those crappy traps as the 1/2. Seriously, those traps I got suck - buy the old-school wood base traps with the big spring.

I really hope my infestation is from stuff I brought in from the garage and not from a secret entrance those little bastards had built into my house.