So we've had a (very brown) mouse dashing around our house for a month now, with no luck capturing him. (We set out a few peanut-butter-laced no-kill traps in seemingly savvy places. Nada.) Figuring out where he's hiding during the day and what the hell he's up to at night is just as puzzling.
Between 1 and 3 a.m. every night (I'm often up late grading papers & etc.) he scampers from the music room into our small middle-of-the-house hallway, behind the big pine cabinet beneath our TV----and then dashes from that right toward the (recliner) chair I'm in. Across the open floor, and the bright light. Then he disappears. I've flipped the chair over and looked and poked around it aplenty with a flashlight. Nada. He could be zipping beyond the chair, but he's nowhere to be found under the baseboard radiators, under/in any other furniture in the front room (including the couch), etc. At times, two hearty teens are helping me flip furniture over to try to find where he went, sliding a broom all along the space between the radiator and floor, etc. And our dog, who's quite feral, will leap off the couch at the mouse's diagonal dash, only to lose it, each time, when it reaches my chair.
So
1) What is this guy doing? Why is he exposing himself to such risk as that, running into the one room that's lit and occupied, by not just bidpeds but by the dog?
2) Where could he be going? The kitchen is at the other end of the house, and there have to be safer routes to it (e.g., through the basement and up through plumbing holes and framing spaces, etc.). We cleaned all the crumbs out of the front room as soon as the mouse showed up. We vacuumed under the couch cushions, we move the furniture and sweep several times a week, etc. The three of us poking around with flashlights not only can't find him once he disappears into the room, but we don't see any signs of him. No feces, no chewed-into this and that, no nesting.
3) He's nowhere to be found in the music room, too. (Plus, since he isn't nesting in the '74 Bandmaster Reverb in there, I'm considering him an anti-Fender metal head.)
4) Since he's ignoring the traps, should we bait them with something other/better than peanut butter? If so, what?
I admire his chutzpah and laugh that he's outwitting us. But having had hanta virus already once, and just recoiling from the idea of rodents in the house (lawyer jokes left aside here), I do want him out. Alive, but elsewhere. It's his world, too, yes, but our home.
Thanks for your advice here.
Between 1 and 3 a.m. every night (I'm often up late grading papers & etc.) he scampers from the music room into our small middle-of-the-house hallway, behind the big pine cabinet beneath our TV----and then dashes from that right toward the (recliner) chair I'm in. Across the open floor, and the bright light. Then he disappears. I've flipped the chair over and looked and poked around it aplenty with a flashlight. Nada. He could be zipping beyond the chair, but he's nowhere to be found under the baseboard radiators, under/in any other furniture in the front room (including the couch), etc. At times, two hearty teens are helping me flip furniture over to try to find where he went, sliding a broom all along the space between the radiator and floor, etc. And our dog, who's quite feral, will leap off the couch at the mouse's diagonal dash, only to lose it, each time, when it reaches my chair.
So
1) What is this guy doing? Why is he exposing himself to such risk as that, running into the one room that's lit and occupied, by not just bidpeds but by the dog?
2) Where could he be going? The kitchen is at the other end of the house, and there have to be safer routes to it (e.g., through the basement and up through plumbing holes and framing spaces, etc.). We cleaned all the crumbs out of the front room as soon as the mouse showed up. We vacuumed under the couch cushions, we move the furniture and sweep several times a week, etc. The three of us poking around with flashlights not only can't find him once he disappears into the room, but we don't see any signs of him. No feces, no chewed-into this and that, no nesting.
3) He's nowhere to be found in the music room, too. (Plus, since he isn't nesting in the '74 Bandmaster Reverb in there, I'm considering him an anti-Fender metal head.)
4) Since he's ignoring the traps, should we bait them with something other/better than peanut butter? If so, what?
I admire his chutzpah and laugh that he's outwitting us. But having had hanta virus already once, and just recoiling from the idea of rodents in the house (lawyer jokes left aside here), I do want him out. Alive, but elsewhere. It's his world, too, yes, but our home.
Thanks for your advice here.
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