mouse trap is more fun as a board game

today i learned that my husband and i have very different views when it comes to mice in your house.

let me explain.

a week or so ago, i sat down for breakfast at our kitchen table, and noticed a few tiny 'presents' that i recognized immediately as mouse droppings, having grown up in a 60 year old rancher that had its fair share of little visitors. when i pointed them out to sam, he told me there was no way that we had mice, especially not upstairs in our kitchen, and anyway, how would they have gotten on the kitchen table? so i dropped the subject, and later removed the table cloth to be washed and didn't bother to replace it.

that night, we opened the dishwasher and saw some more gifts from our four legged friends. sam, still reluctant to admit that we could have any such house guests, pointed out that it would be impossible for a mouse to enter our dishwasher in order to leave the suspect droppings behind. again, i dropped it, although i remained wary.

three nights ago (about a week after the initial sighting) i made barbecue chicken on the grill, and i used my little baster brush to get them extra barbecue-y. while doing the dishes, sam stuck the brush in the dishwasher utensil basket, with the bristles facing the top of the dishwasher. the next morning, half the bristles were littering the bottom of the dishwasher. scattered amongst the fallen baster were little mouseterds.

this convinced sam. he was not happy.

the next afternoon, i bought mouse traps. we set all four of them last night.

this morning, we woke up to find that two of the traps had been licked clean of the copious amounts of peanut butter i had slathered them with, one was just as we had left it, and the fourth one was... gone.

yup.

not there anymore.

and all i could think about was that somewhere in our house, most likely behind our fridge or stove, no more than 3 feet where i cook my meals, is a mouse, awkwardly caught in a trap, that is horribly injured and slowly dying. and soon, it will be dead, and it will start to get stinky. and nasty. and dead mouse-like. this turns my stomach.

sam, however, is triumphant at the idea of having caught one of the little 'suckers' (i changed a letter for politeness' sake). he doesn't care that it's off in some remote corner of our house slowly approaching its last breath. he's just glad its dirty little paws can't crawl around in our dishwasher anymore licking our plates and chewing our baster brushes to pieces. he can't stand the idea of mouse poopies showing up at random places around the house.

i can talk to him about mice roaming our walls and floors without even batting an eye, while his stomach turns and his baser instincts of defense and protection of his home roar into action. i, on the other hand, can't stand the idea of a mouse dying slowly in our midst, while sam proclaims it to the heavens as a fantastical victory over some unseen evil.

maybe this is why we work so well together.

in the end, we will both make sure we are rodent free.