The score keeping idea comes from Tealstar - her husband Jay kept a mouse tally.

Here is the latest on the mouse situation here.

I caught 12 mice in the first live trap I bought. It was a light-weight thing, and I had a feeling they were able to escape it because I was catching one every few minutes before I went to bed but it would be empty in the morning when I got up and checked it.

Next I bought a better trap, a Victor Tin Cat Repeating Live Trap. It can hold 30 mice, according to the label.



They go in that square hole you see on the end (there is one on the other end) and a little spring-loaded ramp arrangement inside keeps them inside. It's the county jail of mouse traps.

The first night it was in my kitchen it didn't catch any mice, so I put it in the garage. No mice there, either. Someone had told me that after you catch some mice in one spot, you don't catch any more for awhile, so maybe I caught all the ones I had for now.

Last night I put the trap next door at the empty guest cabin. The mouse guests over there have been exploring everywhere - on the beds, on the kitchen counters, inside the kitchen drawers at a minimum. I expected to find several of them inside that trap this morning, but there was only one quiet little mouse.

To dispose of all these mice, I am carrying whichever trap onto the bridge and emptying the occupant(s) into the river. One of the early mice landed on the edge of the bridge and got away and since it was dark night out, I didn't see for sure that all the ones hitting the water floated completely away.

This morning the subdued mouse hit the water and started swimming. The current wasn't very strong, and he was able to actually swim to the shore and I could see him pulling out of the water into the tall grass. I just hope that by the time he gets back into the house he'll have forgotten that the Tin Cat is a trap and rush right back in so we can have a repeat swimming meet starting in the middle of the river, not so close to the edge.

I can hardly believe there was just that one mouse next door so far, and am looking forward to what I'm going to find there tomorrow.