I have my theories

Today I picked up the dog water and spilled it under the oven. I figured that was a good enough reason to pull the oven out and clean under it. Usually I clean under the oven every 6 months or so. Some of you may think that is disgusting and I should do it more but I just can't! I am paranoid about what I might find under there.

5 years ago, when I was in my postpartum stage after having John, we started having a serious mouse problem. There was mouse poop everywhere! I called my exterminator asking if there was anything that he could do to fix the problem. He asked me how I was picking up the mouse poop and I told him I was picking it up with a paper towel. He totally freaked me out. He told me I needed to spray it with Lysol and with gloved hands use a paper towel to pick it up and throw it away. Remember the serious disease you can get from mouse poop from deer mice? He told me I could possibly have deer mice and I could die from picking up the poop. I completely lost it!! I called The Dad in hysterics!! He was golfing. I told him I was going to die!! He of course calmed me down a bit and explained that we have house mice, not deer mice and I didn't need to worry about my upcoming death. I think he and his co-workers had a pretty good laugh about my hysterics after the phone call. Postpartum!!!

Back to today. I pulled out the oven and was expecting to see tons of mouse poop even though we haven't heard or seen very many mice this summer. But no, that's not what I saw. I saw a dead mouse. A flat, dead mouse. A flat, decomposing, dead mouse, caught in a trap. I had been contemplating cleaning under the oven for several weeks but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Boy, am I glad! Glad that The Dad was home today otherwise there would have been another frantic call like the one I placed to him when I found a dead mouse under the fridge (yes, I clean under the fridge every six months or so also).

My theories:

1. The mouse ate the poison in the bait box then got caught in the trap.
2. The mouse didn't smell because the poison prevents that from happening.
3. We haven't had a ton of mice this summer not because we have a useless cat in the house, but because we had a dead mouse under our oven and the other mice didn't want die!!

My conclusion:

If you don't want mice in your house, find a dead one and put it in your house. It WILL keep the mice away.