Chocolate Mouse

A couple days ago, I was just going to bed when I heard a clatter from the kitchen. I assumed the spatula had fallen over or something and went to sleep. Yesterday, I saw a little pellet on the bathroom floor that could conceivably be a mouse dropping. I was suspicious, but not entirely convinced. I haven't seen any mice in the year and a half I've been in my current basement apartment, but there is a good chance that the recent cold snap could be driving some creatures to seek shelter in warm houses.

Now, the rodent menace has showed itself beyond a doubt. I have a cardboard advent calendar with one chocolate for each day, and when I came home today I found two of the cardboard doors messily chewed off and the chocolates missing. Even worse, the mouse hadn't chosen the right dates, so now I have to finish the calendar out of order.

In any case, I went into pest control mode and did a full inspection of my apartment. I found a few droppings along likely mouse runways, and a few other examples of nibbled cardboard. In the kitchen, an easily accessible sleeve of crackers was untouched, but the plastic lid of a container of cocoa mix had been aggressively chewed at; it seems that my rodent roommate has a sweet tooth. The next step, of course, is to take some time to design and implement an integrated pest management solution, but I have already set out two traps baited with chocolate.