Living Room Mouse Hunt

I got Hannibal on October 21, 2001 and during the following winter he caught 4 mice - outside -at the other house in EG. I always thought it was strange to have a dog who was a mouser, typically it's cats that provide that function.

PuddyCat, from next door, spent a lot of time in that house with me, pretty much ignoring Hookey and tolerating Hannibal when he was just a puppy (We moved to Wickford when he was 2 1/2 years old.) Puddy would, on occasion, catch a mouse or two in the kitchen. One time I actually heard the crunching as he ate one. He was a great mouser.

The last winter that I lived there I caught, and killed, 37 mice. There should have been 38 mice but one of them faked me out by pretending to be dead so when I opened the box (I kept their bodies in a shoebox that I would empty every other day) this little mouse jumped out, onto and over my shoulder and down the stairs, into the house. I never did find any trace of him, so who knows where he went to.

At the new house, there are 2 cats (=^o^=) that live upstairs; Scarlett and Sky. Neither of them seem to be good mousers, at least not to my knowledge. What they do do is sneak back into the house once they've been put out for the day. There's some sort of opening under the upstairs deck that allows the cats to climb inside between my ceiling and the upstairs floor, which then leads them into the storage/laundry area. Once in there they meow so loudly that I either put them back outside or let them upstairs into their home. I've never seen even a hint of a mouse where they are concerned. I just hope no other animal comes in their little passageway!

Since I moved to this house, Hannibal has been doing a mouse hunt - in the living room. It's all I can think of when he puts his nose to the rug and runs from one piece of furniture to the next -sniffing away. I've not seen any sign of mice, and when he starts his hunt, I turn on all the lights and hunt right along with him. I finally broke down and bought a couple of mouse traps that are long tunnels, where the mouse goes in to get the peanut butter, and you don't have to worry about your fingers getting smashed or seeing the mouse laying there dead on the floor.

Those two mousetraps are in the living room, just in case there are more than one mouse to be trapped. I've knocked one over and set it off a few times, Emilee set it off once when she was vacuuming so I didn't even notice the other day when the trap was laying on it's side. When I did notice and went to reset it, it wouldn't reset! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I looked inside - a mouse!! Hannibal had no interest in the dead mouse, he only likes to hunt the live ones. So this little mouse spent the next couple of days in the front hall waiting for me to get rid of him.

I just came in from outside where I dumped the little mouse body in the front yard -away from where Hannibal can reach when tied up - hopefully it will become a meal for an owl or a hawk. And not a meal for my little pup.