Saving Twenty Grams

It's a mouse issue not a mouse problem. Somehow they continue to arrive in my kitchen and have snacks. The first course of action would be to eliminate them so I bought those snap traps. They are like a large clothes pin and when mice venture near it's supposed to be a killer. The deal was that someone else would check the trap each morning and dispose of the carcass before I saw it. The problem was that sometimes I could hear the trap being dragged around for a while first. It wasn't the promised instantaneous death, it was lingering and painful.

The day I threw away those traps was the day we had to hunt for it and found it under the dishwasher.... WITH A SINGLE PAW STILL IN IT!! no dead body attached. a lone sad paw.

So now we have live traps.  I use butter. It works. I catch one mouse at a time and let him go free. I've been told that the same one just comes right back in the house but I don't think so.

For it's size it was hard to figure out if there was a mouse inside even if I tipped the closed trap back and forth.  The trap was very sensitive even if we mistakenly brushed past it. So I devised a little experiment.

I placed the empty trap on a scale and set it so the needle read zero.  I was rewarded the very next morning by finding that the trap had been triggered. I weighed the trap and it read almost 20 grams!

We have a house guest that confirmed my finding.

Confidently and happily I went to the back door to set free and admire what I had saved.