Held: Sacrebleu, Invaders!

Love the movie Beauty and the Beast! It totally ranks up there as one of my childhood faves. Lil' Miss is getting a Belle doll with a matching toddler-sized dress for Christmas. (Shhhh...don't tell! :)

So...when I discovered that a fuzzy creature (or creatures) had taken over my kitchen, the first picture that came to my mind was Lumiere - the candlestick/butler - shouting, "Sacrebleu, invaders!" (If I'm using a bad word here, I apologize to all my French-speaking readers. My French vocabulary is pretty much limited to bonjour and oui. ;)

I think the tiny invaders have been around for a while, but they made their presence known last week. (Yup, it's always lovely when small furry creatures show up in your kitchen right before your in-laws come to visit.)

In the middle of the night, they munched through this...

...snacked on this...

...and then tried to take their left-overs down our cold air return.

No joke. I woke up to a party-chewed Hershey bar stuck in a vent in my kitchen. Yuck!

SIDE NOTE: If you look really closely at this picture, you can see red nail polish on the vent. If you don't know what I'm talking about (and you need a laugh), click here.

Thankfully, as I mentioned above, we'd guessed we had a little issue before our fuzzy housemates decided to go on a chocolate bar parade through our kitchen. So Jeremy went out and - being the big, strong man that he is - bought something big enough to mush the invaders to smithereens. (No, we don't have rats. Jeremy just wanted to get the biggest, baddest mousetrap he could find.)

Then he went out-of-town to a conference. Leaving me alone. With the furry invaders. And the half-eaten candy bar. Double yuck!

I remembered a strategy my dad used while I was growing up. He swore that melting cheese on a mousetrap was the best way to make it work. There was no way the mouse could steal the cheese and escape since it was melted to the trap. And - I really think I'm right on this - he melted the cheese to the trap by putting the whole thing in the microwave. Brilliant, right?

Ummmm....not so much.

I tried it. There was smoke. There was fire. Microwave + fire = bad news.

My superpowered mousetrap-on-steroids ended up looking like this.

Oops! (I think microwaves were wimpier and mousetraps were stronger in the 80's.)

The piece of plastic that held the springbar in place melted. So I was back at square one.

Thankfully I have two friends (who will remain anonymous) who've also had some unwanted visitors. One friend actually caught nine, which really made me feel better. These two friends (who are now my BFF's) suggested another, much simpler trap. I didn't take a picture, but it looks like a tiny set of black jaws.

I set my traps (with peanut butter instead of melted cheese) and waited.

They worked. Jeremy was home from the conference by this time which was a really good thing because I did not want to get as close to a dead mouse as he had to.

We've only caught one mouse so far. But there haven't been any more wandering Hershey bars or nibbled-on wrappers in our kitchen. If we really only had one little invader, he was a pretty impressive little guy. After all, he did eat half a candy bar and then wedge the rest (a piece bigger than his body) in a vent.

(I'm going to continue to delude myself into thinking that the one dead mouse did this all by himself.)

On a happier note, we're ready for Christmas around here. Lil' Miss's big wish was for a Christmas tree and ornaments.

Her wish came true.