One mouse, many mice. One house, many hice

A mouse got into our house. I'm not sure when. Earlier this week my husband found scat among the pots and pans, and then a day later Sasha and I spotted the mouse downstairs. It's really cute. It's little and gray. When I found scat on my kitchen counter, however, I bought a mouse trap.

We had a mouse in the house last year and found one particular kind of trap to be quite efficient. It's shaped like a large, plastic clothespin; you bait it with peanut butter, and when the mouse crouches to lick it, the clothespin snaps shut, crushing the mouse's skull. It sounds gruesome but if you must kill a mouse, this is a good way. The mouse dies instantly.

My soft-hearted son insisted that we buy a live trap,too, though. He thinks that if we catch the little guy, we can set him free where our street dead-ends. There are rocks to burrow beneath and grasses and bushes to eat and when people wash their cars, water flows down there. "It has everything a mouse needs," said he.

The first night we set out the traps we didn't have any peanut butter, so we used cheese instead. In the morning – as if it were Easter, or Christmas – Blake raced out of bed to see what could be seen. And? Nothing. The mouse took the cheese out of all four traps without being caught.

"Tonight," said I, "PEANUT BUTTER!"

Later I overheard my son talking to the guinea pigs. "Tell the mouse not to eat from the white traps," he said. "Tell him to eat from the live traps!"

And he told me, "Mice are smart. He'll figure out which trap to eat from." Then, after a pause: "But just in case, can we bait only the live traps?"