HOW TO GET RID OF MICE
By: Steve Boehne

The thing is, there are uncounted zillions of mice out there in the fields and in your yard. You could kill them off one by one and fifty more would step in line to come in, eat your food and shit everywhere. They are smart little buggers, but even though much deserved, if you crush one in a mouse trap those left behind never learn the potential hazard of invading your domain because the dead one was unable to communicate his lessons learned. I have therefore perfected a torture and release procedure that has proven mentally rehabilitating to me and effective for eliminating all the mice.

In the 1980’s my shop was located in Laguna Hills next to a large open field that contained as mentioned previously, a zillion mice. We sold catamarans and boat trailers at that store and I was an authorized agent of the DMV. After each sale, I filled out a detailed DMV form and sent it in the next day with the registration fees. If I left this form or any other important papers on my desk, those damn little pests would come in at night, climb up on my desk then shit and piss on all my papers.

I decided to catch one of these grievous creatures and do him great bodily harm just to appease my boiling anger. I devised a trap. From outside, I brought in a large plastic trash can which was the same height as my desk. I got a strong piece of cord and strung it loosely across the top of the can from one side to the other. Right in the center, I set the bait: a section of form paper with the letters DMV prominently visible. Just incase the evil doing mouse was nearsighted, I smeared peanut butter on the paper just below the cord. Next, since my desk was downstairs, I set up a “hunters blind” upstairs where I could hide and see the little bugger meet his match.

That evening, after I closed the shop, I turned down the lights, crouched in the blind with a 6 pack of beer and waited. Unlike the famous Christmas poem, when the lights were turned low and all was quiet, there was a creature stirring and it was that bugger mouse. He squeezed under the front door scampered across the center of the floor straight for his favorite shitting spot; my desk. He went to the boxes stacked next to the desk, climbed from one to the next, then jumped from the top box to my desk chair. From there, he leaped up onto the chair back rest where his creepy little toes gripped like Spiderman, then ran the length of the arm rest onto the desk top. He obviously had saved all his afternoon foraging in his bladder for this very moment because as he nosed around my important papers, he meticulously pissed and shit all over everything. It looked like he dumped 50% if his body weight. Then his nose went into the air, I could see him whiff the bait. He went to the edge of the trash can next to the desk and spied the irresistibly clean DMV form with peanut butter positioned on the center of the cord. Nirvana!

Truly, one of the funniest things I have ever seen was watching that mouse try to tight rope walk that loose cord out to that bait. He stood on the edge of the trash can, stretched his neck towards the distant goal and mentally explored every option. Tenuously, he stepped out over the abyss, gripping the cord with those Spiderman toes. He did pretty well using his tail as balance bar for a while, but when he was about half way to the bait, the string started to swing back and forth. He wobbled & swung, wobbled & swung, but with his goal just out of reach, he took another step forward. Soon, his left rear leg and right front leg were swinging in the air like a rodeo rider, then he rolled over and found himself hanging under the cord by the toes on one front foot. Obviously the hand over hand – under cord hang- walk was not taught in Mouse boot camp because he just hung there. He looked longingly at the bait then back at the edge of the can and seemed unable to form a strategy to deal with his predicament. I had out smarted the mouse! I could see his conscious decision to let go and drop to the bottom of the trash can – my trap.

At that time, I hadn’t actually devised my torture routine yet, so I decided to just flush him down the toilet. I picked up the trash can and ejected him right into the toilet. I was surprised to see how well the little bugger could swim, in fact, he floated like a marshmallow and swam round and around the bowl. I felt better, but yet unsatisfied. I found a package of extra hot “fire” taco sauce from Taco Bell and squirted some on his face. This really set him off. He was shaking his head and splashing up a storm. After about five minutes of struggle, he cleared most of the taco sauce out of his eyes. He was taking a breather floating around in the water and had a smirk on his face like: Is that all you got buddy? So looking around, I spied the liquid hand soap and I dropped a single drop on his back. I was amazed to see that the hand soap apparently cut the water barrier in his fur which immediately caused his body to sink under water. His head still floated fine, so he continued to swim around unperturbed. As I was looking for my next item of discomfort, I saw a big black stink bug walking across the floor. I scooped it up with a piece of paper and tossed it into the toilet with the mouse. The stink bug began struggling to climb out of the water. As the mouse swam passed, the stink bug climbed up on his face to get out of the water. The stink bug had a full body grip on the mouse’s face. This put the mouse into a delirious panic. He was shaking, contorting and writhing, yet the stink bug hung on even tighter. I just kept thinking of all the piss and shit all over my desk. This mouse deserved every second of his misery. After a while, I became bored so I dripped one more drop of hand soap onto the stink bug and the mouse’s face. Again, the water barrier was broken in his fur and the mouse with the stink bug sank directly to the bottom of the toilet. Since the stink bug didn’t have any fur, he let go of the mouse’s face and immediately floated to the surface. You could see the mouse’s relief. He sat quietly at the bottom of the toilet glad to be rid of the stink bug, but before long he needed air so he swam up to breath. The stink bug saw him and climbed back up on his face again. The mouse shook and writhed, but he could not dislodge the stink bug. After a while, he remembered how the stink bug let go when he sank to the bottom, so he quite swimming and sank down again. Sure enough, the stink bug floated away.

After several episodes of: swim, breath, attack and sink, the mouse became exhausted. Finally he just couldn’t swim any more. He rolled over onto his back at the bottom of the toilet. A few bubbles escaped from his mouth, then he went into convulsions. I reached for the flush lever, but was curious whether the little bugger had learned his lesson. I reached in and pulled him out by the tail. I got some masking tape and hung him upside down by the tail from the piece of cord on the trash can until he dried out. After quite a while he came to and began wiggling around. What to do? What to do? I took him out the back door and let him go. This turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing I have ever done, because I never had another mouse enter that shop.