Mouse in the house!

In the first 26 years I lived in my condo, I had one mouse experience. Then last fall, after the building next year had a fire, I had a mouse in my bedroom wall. My friend and neighbor Joe got rid of it for me. It appeared to be a one and done mouse situation.

While the fire next door was small the water damage from putting it out was HUGE. And after about a year of negotiating with insurance and contractors, construction began in earnest on what is a down-to-the-studs, out with the ruined floors, gut reno.

The noise – jackhammering, drilling, pounding, sluicing old floorboards and cabinets out the window and down the chute into the dumpster – has been terrible. At least it was until I got myself a pair of $300 Bose noise-canceling headphones. Bust they jut cancel (muffle, actually) the noise. They do nothing for the mice.

The building next door is one of a series of row houses built circa 1860, on landfill, on the flat part of Beacon Hill. My condo is in another of these buildings.

Amazing, given the antiquity of my building, not to mention that landfill aspect, that I’ve only had two mice prior to this year. But now…

About a week ago, I was sitting in my den when I saw a mouse scamper across my field of vision and into the den closet. I opened the door to the closet and – eek! – the mouse ran out. Not expecting a confrontation, I shrieked, the mouse freaked, and then it streaked. Whereto, I didn’t quite see.

So I re-upped, with new mouse-bait gel, the two types of traps I’d gotten last year when I had the mouse in the wall: old-fashioned spring guillotine traps, and new-fangled plastic ones that lure mice in then slam the door on them and their tiny little lives.

I didn’t catch anything. But I didn’t see anything for a few days, either.

Sometimes I can be optimistic. Maybe, I told myself, it was just passing through.

Nope. After a few nights, it paid another visit. I screamed at it to f-off, and it f-offed to behind the loveseat I’d been sitting on. After that I couldn’t see where it went, but I did tip the loveseat up and determine that it hadn’t taken up residence in there.

I bought and put out more of both types of traps, but this time swapped out the green gel bait for peanut butter. Plus I put some ward-off, anti-mice packets full of something at the place I figured they might be coming through.

Then on Sunday evening, while watching baseball, it (or one of its pals or – ick – babies: this one did look pretty tiny) ran onto the rug in front of the loveseat. I cursed at this little critter, but softly this time, telling it that there was nothing for him in the den. Sure, I eat in front of the TV plenty of times, but it’s not like I’m slobbing food on to the rug (at least not without picking it up).

On Monday, I set in supplies:

Steel wool to plug up the cracks in the baseboard. Duh! Why hadn’t I thought of this first thing. After all, part of the charm in living in an ancient building is that it sometimes settles, leaving gaps between floor and baseboard. Me and my trusty screwdriver went at it with the steel wool. It’s not a great look, but who cares?

Peppermint oil. Tim at the Gym also lives in an ancient urban condo. He recommended peppermint oil. And the very helpful person at Whole Foods told me that, before she got her cat – and I am NOT going there – she used peppermint oil on cotton swabs to keep mice at bay. I didn’t use the cotton swabs, but The Google confirmed the merits of peppermint oil, so I made up a spray bottle full of one-part peppermint oil (which ain’t cheap, at least not at Whole) and one part water. And I sprayed around baseboards I’d plugged with steel wool, as well as those that didn’t appear to have any gaps.

Irish Spring. Who knew that Irish Spring soap was good for something? The Google, that’s who. I couldn’t face clearing out the den closet, 8 foot deep and chocked full of useless desktops, laptops, routers, and printers. Not to mention plastic containers full of bedding. And other stuff. So I chopped up a couple of bars of Irish Spring and hurled them to the back of the closet. Mice be gone!

It’s only been a night or two, but so far so good.

Meanwhile, the gut reno-ing next door continues a-pace. Guess I should be happy that it hasn’t dislodged a larger member of the rodent family. If that happens, well, both my sisters are on the alert for my decamping to one of their places if I spot one of those jumbos.