Mouse.

There's nothing like walking into the kitchen to find a mouse with its neck clamped under the spring-loaded bar of a rodent trap.

Except, maybe, walking into your kitchen to find a little brown rodent helping itself to your Cheerios.

It's gruesome. It's macabre. I don't like killing things. But mice are gross.

A few weeks ago I heard a noise in the kitchen behind the oven. It was definitely the noise of an entity, not just the oven creaking and ticking as it often does when it heats up. No, this was a pitter-pat kind of noise. It was followed by a squeak-squeak kind of noise.

To my horror, a flashlight revealed that a little brown mouse had moved in behind the oven and was picnicking on bird seed and crumbs. We have two pet birds, and they are slobs. They throw seeds and stuff all over the place and even the most meticulous vacuumer will miss a few.

So Mr. Mouse (it's probably a bad idea to name something you're about to kill -- and maybe it was Ms. Mouse anyway) kept scritch-scratching away back there and I ran to the corner J.J. Peppers store to buy a trap.

We put out two traps, one on either side of the oven. We baited one with peanut butter and one with a scrap of turkey pastrami. We turned off the light and left the room.

A mere ten minutes later, my husband and I heard a snap. We looked at each other with an unforgettable look of horror/queasiness.

We went back to the kitchen. Mr. Mouse had died with his little mouth still biting down on the pastrami. It was a perfect kill: fast and clean. We discarded the animal and trap in a sandwich baggie.

The next morning I looked at the other trap and realized that the peanut butter had been neatly nibbled off the trigger, but the trap had not been snapped. This brings us to lesson number one.

Lesson No. 1: Don't use peanut butter as bait.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4