Death: Brought to You Today by Skippy Peanut Butter and Kraft Singles

Before Thanksgiving my roommate called me into her room sometime around 1am and said she heard a 'chewing' noise coming from the corner of her room. I, like an idiot, assumed there was a mouse in her garbage can so I *picked it up and shook it*. Dumb. Out it came and ran across the room. Roommate does the cliche 'girl on chair screaming' routine and I spend the next hour checking every purse, shoe, and bag in her room for vermin.

Soooo... I purchased some traps! I'm really more excited than I should be about this, but this is probably the closest I'll ever come to hunting (In ND babies are born in blaze orange with shotguns in hand). I purposly purchased the traps I thought looked most 'splatterly' for the maximum gore factor.

I got eight of the old school 'snap off your fingertips' traps and loaded them up with a combination of peanut butter, cheese, coffee (I found that the mouse likes the butter pecan flavor the hard way... grrr...) and some mint gum. The coffee and gum are pretty fragrant so they should attract the mice well. Peanut butter was recommended by the manufacturer, and well, cheese is kinda required by tradition isn't it? Check out this buffet of death!

I placed one in my room, one in the cabinet where the coffee was mooched, (see photo with mouse-munched coffee)three in the basement, and two in the roomie's room where the mouse was originally found. Don't worry, she's out of town all weekend so she won't be grossed out by the savage brutality about to occur.

Setting the traps proved to make me feel less like a brave hunter and more like an eight year old girl. I flinched whenever one snapped on me and clenched my jaw every time I set a new one. My jaw actually hurt by the eigth trap. I'm not proud. At least I didn't scream when I had one snap on me!

So, anyways, about two hours after I set the traps I was watching TV in the living room and I thought I heard something. I yelled to my roomie in the kitchen to ask if he flicked on a light switch or if a mousetrap went off somewhere in the house. He said he didn't do anything and suddenly I became like a kid on Christmas morning. I came tearing down the basement stairs only to find that, not only did the trap not catch anything, but the dang mouse BROKE the mousetrap so I couldn't reset it. JERK! Oh... his day's coming...