When mice force you to clean something or throw it away, they get a point. If you catch a mouse, you get a point. If they manage to burn your house down or send your car/lawnmower to the shop, they win, for the whole year. You can never win. That’s the game.

Though I’m far behind, I might be finally making a little progress, now that I’m better armed. My new Victor electric mousetrap has zapped four so far, nabbing one every couple days. If this keeps up, it will be the best solution I’ve found.

And I’ve tried quite a few. Here’s what I don’t like about each:

•  Standard spring traps are easily fooled, and they get gross with gore.
• Humane traps require you to relocate the mouse, and unless you spend a lot of time driving, they will find their way back. I think they only make sense if you have a pet snake.
• Glue traps are mean. Much as I resent the mayhem that mice wreak, particularly that SOB who girdled my Lady apple tree, they are just trying to scratch out a living, and honor demands a humane kill. Stuck in glue, the mice wreck your karma by doing things like bleeding to death because they’ve chewed their paws off in trying to escape. Or, they squeal and squeal in the night, hoping against hope that someone does something about their predicament. Glue traps are awful. Nasty. Mean. Cosmically wrong.
• Poison seems dangerous, what with the dogs and chickens and children running about. The mouse eats poison and runs outside (hopefully), looking for a stiff drink, but then who eats the poisoned mouse? It seems bad for the ecosystem. Also, poisoned mice sometimes die in inconvenient places, and can stink up the house for days. If they stink after you kill them, it’s their point, not yours. And an exterminator visit is awfully expensive, though the most effective means of control. Maybe I’ll get there again, at some point.

But I’m on electric mousetraps, for now.

One could argue that mice are endearing. However, they become less so, as they win more and more, destroying more and more of your life. Mice harbor baby ticks that lead to Lyme disease (securing their wins against my family in 2008 and 2010). They girdle fruit trees (winner 2004). They ruin food and soil plates (winners every year of my adult life). They chew up electrical wires in your house, car, lawnmower, etc. They poop on your pots and plates. They chew inside your walls, frightening your children and infuriating your beagles. It’s us or them, and so I’m forced to take a strongly anti-mouse position, particularly against those inside my house.

What mice are best at is getting eaten by hawks, owls, and foxes, which hopefully takes some predator pressure off of my chickens and ducks. If they’d just stay outside, get eaten politely, and keep the hell away from my stuff and the living things under my charge, I’d consider a truce. But for now, it is war, and I have high hopes for my new terrible weapon.