We have serious mouse problems. I mean there was mouse poop on the counters. I should mention that the counter were otherwise clean, it wasn't like there were festering piles of crumbs out there, but I'd come out after wiping the counters down in my nightly ritual and there'd be mouse poop -- a small mouse taunt.

I was pissed off and figured I'd take my ever so effective 59 cent mouse trap that had effectively caught several of this mouse's relations earlier this year and load it with peanutbutter and kill me some rodentia.

So I loaded two of the traps with peanut butter and I put them on my clean counters.

I came out the next morning and the traps weren't sprung, but all the peanut butter was gone. And there was mouse poop on the counter next to the traps. Serious Mouse Taunting. I just had this vision of the mouse carefully licking all the peanut butter off and then crapping on the counter and then doing a "neener neener neener" dance before heading to the next trap to do the same thing.

So yesterday, I got serious and went to Lowes and asked where the rat poison was. The guy pointed me to a plethora of rodent endangering devices and poisons on Aisle 23. I was impressed by Aisle 23. I didn't know there were so many ways to kill mice.

There were, of course, the apparently ineffective 59 cent wood and metal traps reminiscent of cartoons, some of which were mega-sized, which made me think about how big a rodent they were designed for and shudder. There were a variety of poisons, usually of the slow-acting variety. You know -- they'll eat some and take it back to their nest and die. Of course, I've heard nothing but stories about people finding dead or near dying rodents in the middle of the floor or something, so I know that that whole "take it back to the nest" thing is a big fat lie designed to comfort the shriekers (people who scream like a girl when they see a mouse). I won't use poisons because of the kids and our other animals, but never in my life have I seen so many varieties of mouse death in a box. I felt like a creepy serial killer, examining all of these products.

I was looking for the boxes of mouse death that said, "will not harm children or pets" and found several varieties. One was a new improved mousetrap (who says they can't build a better mouse trap) that basically puts a hood over the bait holder which is the hypersensitive trigger that flips the bar on the mouse's back, like the 59 cent variety, only more effective. It also claimed to be reusable, though I know for a fact that I would never reuse it.

They had this one that was the size of a shoe box. You were to turn a crank and it would spring load the thing so that the mouse would stick it's head in and get sucked into a cargo hold with up to 9 of its friends. You could then observe how many of its friends were in there through a see through cover. I don't mind seeing mice, but I guess I didn't want to pay for the privilege of seeing up to 10 of them, especially for 10 bucks. The package said you could then "safe release them" if you wanted, but I want them all dead. With Cowboy gone, our one great mouser is history, so they aren't afraid of our living space any more. I want them to fear entering the premise while we live here because I'll be damned if I will take them to our new house with us.

After picking out a two-pack of the improved mouse trap, I saw a sticky trap. This is just a big sheet of goo that they get stuck on. And then you just chuck them in the trash. They were cheap and I was all over using cheap traps if they worked, so I bought three boxes of four each.

So we laid out two of the new and improved traps and a bunch of the sticky goo traps on the counters, behind the fridge, and in the drawers -- wherever we'd found "sign." I discovered something unpleasant about the sticky goo traps, however, this morning upon finding a mouse severely adhered to one: it doesn't kill them. So the poor pitiful mouse is stuck to this and is struggling valiantly to get out of it to absolutely no avail. At first, I closed the drawer and went back to bed to celebrate capturing one of the little Shitters with Mike, but then told Mike I felt bad because the damned thing was still alive.

Unfortunately, it got its body stuck to one trap and its tail stuck to another, so we had to dump the drawer into a big garbage bag. Mike took it outside and as he said,"...couldn't let it suffer" with a shovel.

I was feeling kind of lousy about it until we started to scrub out the empty drawer, which still smells strongly of mouse pee. Ew.

My chores for the day include buying a loaf of bread and a jar of lysol.