STRANGER THAN FICTION: OF MICE AND MEN AND WOMEN WHO CATCH THEM

When Wal-Mart is sold out of mousetraps, you know you're in trouble.

There's nothing quite like seeing a mouse in your home.

You feel a little violated. It's YOUR home, gosh darn it, with cabinets full of YOUR food. Mice have no right to just come in and act like they own the place, making little mouse poops wherever they want.

My folks always had cats so that we wouldn't have mice. The cats were very good about bringing a number of gifts to the front door of the family home -- dead mice, moles, baby birds, all the stuff you love to see when stepping outside for your morning paper.

Then I moved out to the greater Piedmont metropolitan region. Yep, my roommates and I were in mouse country, where the critters roamed free. They freely roamed right into our mobile home every winter.

My roommates were surprisingly squeamish for country girls, so guess who was responsible for the trapping? Instead of helping me catch the box-gnawing critters we saw dashing over our kitchen floor, they NAMED the darn things.

I made regular trips to the dollar store and came back with several traps, which cost a quarter each.

At that time, there were two schools of thought on mouse elimination: You could poison them or trap them. With poison, you run the risk of a mouse keeling over behind a cabinet or in another inconvenient place. The smell usually hits about the time you invite your boss over for dinner.

But traps aren't much better. You lie in bed at night trying to get some rest, wondering if you'll feel the pitter-patter of little feet over your face, when SNAP! You've caught your first mouse. It's tough to sleep after that.

Some people reuse their traps. With the asking price a quarter each, I decided to live a little and throw them out, mouse and all.

The Other Half and I lived mouse-free throughout our married life until last week.

I got up one sunny morning, grabbed the newspaper and sat down in my favorite easy chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a dark brown object streak from under my chair to behind the sofa.

I'm not ashamed to say I screamed like a woman.

Mr. Half rolled out of bed and helped me move the sofa forward. We held wastebaskets to capture the critter. Unfortunately, said critter had moved in the time it took to get Mr. Half back from the Land of Nod.

We went to Wal-Mart for mousetraps. They were out of the traditional traps but had these big boxes that would capture mice live. What did we look like, zookeepers? We didn't want to observe their habits, we wanted the disease-infested, poop-leaving mongrels DEAD! (Insert maniacal laugh here.)

Another store yielded a supply of the sticky traps, which I'd never seen before. The idea is that Mickey wanders around one day, becomes curious about this little yellow box with holes in each end and gets stuck to the bottom of the box. Ends up fingers can get stuck to the bottom of the box too, but that's another column.

We caught Mickey a day after setting out the traps and haven't seen any mice since. Apparently word travels fast in the rodent community.

There's a new sheriff in town. And she don't put up with no mice.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.