The Mouse Hunt

Remember this cute little guy? Isabella, the mouse. We gave her to Natalie on Sunday Aug 22nd to celebrate her 6th birthday!
Just 6 short days later, she became lost.

It started with Natalie and her friends playing with the mouse and getting a little too comfortable with her running around her room. All of the sudden I hear, "I can't find her!"

We looked around for her and out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash in the bathroom. Nat and I try to corner her with the door closed but she disappeared! Seems there is an unseen gap in the the base of the cabinet underneath the sink. At least we knew where she was. So we googled "how to catch a mouse ALIVE!" and constructed this trap...

The idea is she's enticed by the smell of peanut butter, follows the trail up the ramp and jumps into peanut butter bliss where she's trapped until we retrieve her from the bottom of the bucket. Sounded good right?!

No sign of the mouse, at all!

Monday afternoon our cat is meowing very loudly at the kitchen stove. I removed the bottom drawer and low and behold, there's Isabella! So she's not been in the bathroom like we thought.

Thinking I could stick something back there to make her run out, we set up towels to try and contain her. The girls were so excited.

All the damn mouse did was crawl up into the housing of the stove and oven. Not sure whether to use the stove to cook dinner or not, I ordered pizza. At this point I've gone from concerned about the mouse, to very aggravated about the mouse.

Finally Tuesday, I put the stove back together and figure we're just going to have to retrieve a dead mouse from behind some appliance once she finally starves to death. I'm not happy about this and even more aggravated I BROUGHT THIS MOUSE INTO MY HOUSE and therefor invited this drama and hassle!

Through out the week, Princess our cat, teases me with false signs of spotting the mouse.


Friday afternoon rolls around and it's now been 5 solid days without seeing her. I'm loading the dishwasher and out of the corner of my eye, see the mouse running from the dining room into the kitchen and under the dishwasher.

I figure she's got to be starving as she's been without food or water for SIX days. I put a piece of her food smeared with peanut butter next to another unknown gap in the kick plate part of the cabinet and wait. Out pops her head! She IS hungry.

N and I set up a plan where I watch for her to pop out and then N grabs her. Of course the mouse is too fast and now wise to our plan. We regroup and Val is the lookout and I'm ready with a clear plastic shoebox inches from the ground. She won't come out. V and I have this silent exchange where I look questioning to her, "Is she there?" Val shakes her head no. This continues for a full 5 minutes when finally V's eyes light up and she smiles with excitement. Finally I see the tip of her nose approaching the food. A little more patience and her whole body is under the shoe box. I quickly slam it down and got her! I don't even remember how I got her out from under the box, but we did.

I don't think I've been that excited about an accomplishment in a long while! How she survived with 3 cats and 1 dog while moving through out the house is amazing to me!

We now have new rules as to who and how Isabella can be handled. I really hope that's the last time I'm part of a mouse hunt, but somehow know it probably isn't.