opinios

Nine Blind Mice

Some of you may remember the rat story from our apartment in Tokyo.

With that experience fresh in our mind, you can imagine our delight when we first moved into our Melbourne apartment and kept hearing strange scratching sounds coming from inside the kitchen wall. As much as we didn't want a repeat of the Tokyo rat, there was no way that we were going to share our apartment with rodents again. So while my wife was out earning money to pay the rent, as the unemployed house-husband it was my number one priority to get rid of the little bastards.

The range of mousetrap options in Australia certainly exceeds the Japanese market. When I was living in Preston with my cousin a few years ago we were broke and opted for the cheapest traps available - your standard-fare metal-spring on wood option. They worked, but they sprayed blood and brains on the carpet and wall to get the job done (note to self: when setting mouse traps, make sure you remember exactly where you have put them and check them regularly, to avoid the nasty surprise of discovering a smelly decomposing corpse under your bed two weeks later).

So this time I opted for the "Safe 'n' Swift" washable reusable fail-proof plastic mega super trap just because its distinguishing feature according to the packaging was "no mess". The instructions also recommended using peanut butter on the traps, rather than the universally accepted cheese, and so armed with these super traps and some Kraft Super Crunchy, I lay the bait and lay in wait.

As it turns out, we had a whole family of mice living in our kitchen. And they didn't go exploring for food in numbers - they would send out a brave explorer one at a time. "Strength in numbers" would have been my approach personally, but I guess this little clan sat around in my kitchen playing "Scissors, Paper, Rock" and then sent the unlucky loser of their little mouse game out to forage for the week's supplies solo.

So, one by one, each member of the family fell victim to my traps. I set four of them, and each morning over the course of a couple of weeks I would wake up and find one or two dead mice, with surprised looks on their faces and their mouth stuffed with peanut butter. After the ninth, there were no more.

Now, if only I could work out how to get rid of all the damn ants in the bathroom...