This Makes Little to No Sense to Me

So a month or so ago, I found some mouse turds in the garage and had my pest people come in to put up some traps. The guy also came in and checked out the house and found some turds under the kitchen sink (GROSS) and put up three traps in the little cubby behind the pipes and one right by my garbage. He was pretty cute, which may be a minor part of my story.

Well, Monday was my bi-monthly check that the pest people do. This new guy (it's hardly ever the same one) came in and starts telling me about how they've had to get rid of some of their guys because of some problems and that everything should be fine now, not that I've noticed any huge problems in the, what, 10 minutes a month ago that the last guy was out. So the new guy, I'll call him Michael, starts checking the mouse traps and tells me that none of them were actually baited. The bait they use is in a squeeze bottle, sort of like a toothpaste tube. It's not like they have to go pull worms out of my yard and cut them into bite-sized pieces and season them or anything. Just squeeze the goo out, approximately half an inch of goo. Basically, you're probably talking about three, maybe four muscles working for maybe ten seconds, eight traps total in my house and my garage, four inches of goo from a big tube of maybe 50. I'm just saying.

So I'm like, why wouldn't he have baited them? My sister theorized that his business is pests, so if he doesn't bait them, the pests will stay and he will get more business. That actually doesn't really make sense because he has to come for free since I have a contract. I didn't notice him checking me out or anything, so I think we can safely say he didn't have any designs on the woman of the house. He didn't look like he had any physical problems, that is to say his fingers and opposable thumb were working fine, so I don't think he was having a squeezing problem. Michael said maybe he just didn't want to run back out to his truck and get a new tube because he was out (since I SAW the tube IN HIS HAND), so he just used that tube for show. Okay, maybe slighly more plausible, but still. It's not like he was parked on the street, 15 yards away. He was right in my driveway. He doesn't personally benefit by saving money by not using bait, I'm assuming, since the company probably wouldn't be thinking, Oh, Bill went to ten houses yesterday and used four tubes of bait, and Adam went to 11 houses and only used one. My hero. He saved the company $8.40 in bait. I just don't buy that.

Anyway, Michael filled all the traps up with bait and replaced the three rat traps that had been used instead of mouse traps, seeing as how a mouse isn't heavy enough to trip a rat trap anyway, and there was no concern about rats. The first guy told me that he had had so many calls that he was actually out of mouse traps, even though I'm quite certain the reason I had him come out was that I found MOUSE TURDS in my garage. Anyway, Michael tells me to check the traps in a week and give them a call if they catch anything.

Later that night, of course, I hear a sort of muffled snap. A few minutes later, another one. Yesterday morning I went to check the trap under the sink, which was no longer where it had been. Great. Anyway, I did see the edge of it a little ways away, and I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of what moved it there. I immediately called my pest people and told them I needed them to come back out. See, I'm not touching anything, and I want the traps reset anyway, even if I were to move the decaying body from under my sink. Even if I were to tell my husband and have him move the aforementioned dead body, I still want the trap reset WITH BAIT. The earliest they can make it is Thursday morning between 11:00 and 1:00. I checked to make sure the bodies (I'm assuming, since I heard two snaps, that there is another dead rodent back in the space way under the sink) wouldn't be stinking by then (they shouldn't be). I took the garbage out, partly because it is full and partly because I don't want to open under my sink anymore under Michael comes back. I don't even think I'll bug my husband about it. We have a contract and pay these people. It's their job. I'M NOT DOING IT. But I've got the serious heebie-jeebies every time I go in the kitchen.

So when Michael was done setting the traps, he also told me he would check the service log back at the office to see who it was that had been here originally. I felt pretty bad that the first guy was going to lose his job, if he hadn't already, especially because he was so cute. Until I heard that snap, snap. I still might have felt slightly bad until I actually saw that the trap had caught a mouse. Now, not so much. That little shit had lived IN OUR KITCHEN for at least a month, probably more, since the last guy had set his Wonder Baitless Traps. Michael told me that the bait goo, to mice, is like Baskin Robbins. Without the bait, there would be NO reason to go near them. What the hell. HELLO.