Evidently my parents' mean old lady cat *was* doing something because when she passed away last month the mice showed up. We have a family friend who's an exterminator and he took care of the problem for them, thank goodness.

Mice are nature's protein - they are meant to be predated but too many humans and too much human stuff have shifted the playing field. It's not being a bad citizen of earth to exterminate them from your house.

We use snap traps with peanut butter - the traps are far more humane so I don't have a total meltdown when disposing of the body. We do have a cat, but the one time a mouse got into the house, the cat was like NOPE and headed to the top of the fridge.

Seconding snap traps with peanut butter. If you're squeamish (like me), there are covered snap traps (basically a snap trap in a box) so you don't actually have to see the dead mouse once they've done their job.

3 week stay-at-home starts tonight at midnight for my county. This is a relief, at this point, although it's triggered by ICU capacity thresholds which is troubling to think about. I may have to actually go grocery shopping rather than overuse DoorDash but that's the most impact it will have on my current lifestyle, I think.

Chiming in to agree with the recommendation of snap traps baited with peanut butter. My sister had glue traps in her basement, but her (elderly, fat, one-eyed) cat got caught. They got her loose, but she had glue on her paws, so walking was an issue. She ended up calling an emergency number, having to pay, and was told to use vegetable oil to remove the glue.

We do have a cat, but the one time a mouse got into the house, the cat was like NOPE and headed to the top of the fridge.

Ha, ha! Yeah, I don't think my two cats would know what to do (they are fully indoor, and we live on the third floor of a well-maintained apartment building - they've never seen a mouse that isn't stuffed and requiring them to animate it at all.)

Fourthing or fifthing the peanut butter snap trap rec. When we lived in South Philly a couple years ago, we had a mouse issue. Mice. Our little fuckers were picky - we had to try things other than peanut butter at one point. I do not miss mice one bit.

We've had a mouse issue in our office which, considering that one woman has a real phobia about mice, is a problem. The pest control guys come in to check the place the mice seemed to be using as a home base and we've been mouse free for a while. The placed snap traps with the plastic "cheese" for bait around the office, but I don't think they ever caught anything. They liked the area under the office kitchen sink, but the guy with the drawer full of food might have been an attraction.

The kitty that wandered into the bar while M was doing some maintenance work that we subsequently adopted (Taboo) earned her keep the winter Peanut was a newborn. We got mice for the first time ever, and Taboo turned out to be one of the best mousers I've ever seen. She was very proud of herself.

Long-distance hugs to everyone who wants them.

In my mind I am still a kid and I am really miffed that I am expected to work on a snow day. I am doing the very least. I am keeping with with emails and I got in my morning report. Somehow messing around online seems ok, but doing Christmas cards does not.

I have similar feelings about what is acceptable work procrastination and what is not. I feel like there's a dissertation in there somewhere.

I had many mental replies to people, but they are now lost to the sands of time, so, here we are, with 2 days left in the semester.