We have a mouse. The first sign was that the stick of butter I left out on a plate on the counter overnight got mouse teeth marks all over it when the mouse totally chowed down all night long. Then we started to hear the mouse run across the ceiling (think the tiles that were in your classroom when you were in school, that's what kind of ceiling we have)-- one way at the beginning of the night, and the other direction in the morning. That went on for about a week. So we got a mousetrap, left it on the counter where the butter was (now being stored in the fridge), and baited it with butter (we put the trap on a towel so the mouse would not directly be on the counter when the it died). Of course, the mouse didn't show up anymore, though we still heard it in the ceiling. We spiffied up the trap with cheese, and this morning when I got up, the trap was sprung and moved from the towel:


When I had returned to my computer to start my morning and Spencer got up, he called me back to the kitchen for CSI: Rodent. There was actually blood all across the counter, sink, a little on the wall, and the floor. This bloody trail went from the trap around toward the fridge, then back alongside the fridge and into a big hole in the wall! And since this happened the way it did, we're sure now that our mouse is actually a rat, which is why it got away from the trap (though clearly not unharmed).


Then the pieces started coming together-- we didn't hear the rat go back across the ceiling this morning, so it's either dead or it walked back slowly. But what's going to suck is if it went back into the wall and then died..... That will make a stink. Ugh. So I'm hoping actually that it recovers from its wounds and comes back so that I can try to get it with a bigger trap next time...

That's the story of our rat...

Also, I posted some new non-mouse-related photos in my gallery today...