Mouses and Houses

   Off I went a few weeks ago to Country Living Store in Mechanicville in an attempt to thwart the influx of mice into our house.  My goal was to buy some caulk to apply to the crevices in the foundation of our house.  The clerk was a man who looked and sounded a little like Jerry Van Dyke.  He was most helpful, found me some caulk and asked if I had a caulking gun. I knew we did; there are at least 3 in our basement.  I'd noticed them earlier in the year among our cache of 5 lawn sprinklers.  I bought 2 tubes or canisters of caulk; the nice man told me I could return the extra one if I didn't need it.
   I've never actually caulked anything before. Spackled, yes, but never caulked.  But I've seen it done and it looked easy--and almost fun, or at least satisfying.  I loaded the canister into the gun; I did need a little in-house advice for that, but then I was ready to go.  It was nice weather, a good day to be outside.  I'd already scraped out the old loose caulk and brushed it away with a wire brush.  I had come prepared, armed even with the metal scraper thing to smooth it out after the application.
      I pressed the nozzle of the gun into the crevice and pulled the trigger, but nothing much happened.  I tried several times, my thumb getting sore from  the pressure, and only a few drops or blobs of caulk squiggling out.  I had expected it to be kind of like toothpaste smoothly inserting itself into the space and filling it up.  Instead it was more like trying to fill a crack with crumbly cookie dough. It wasn't working and my fingers were hurting.  I stopped.
    But I didn't give up--not then.  I went back down into the basement and retrieved a second caulking gun, a newer model.  It worked a little better, but only a little--not well enough.  I came up with another plan:  I would cut open the tube of caulk  and dab the caulk into the crevices with a putty knife.  The tube turned out to be made of impenetrable steel though, so that approach didn't work either; not even  an Exacto knife could slice into the metal.
  My final strategy was to squish all the caulk out of the tube into a bucket and then spackle it into the crevices.  The weather turned cold, so that hasn't happened yet, though the possibility is there.
  Anyway, the mouse invasion seemed to have ceased.  The lone trap in the basement has seen no action the last few weeks, Maybe no longer stares under the oven door, I still see no signs of mouse presence. I'm feeling relieved.  Surely the season has ended.
   When we came home this evening, I turned on the oven to cook a small roast.  After it was in the oven about 40 minutes or so, I was checking it for  doneness when a mouse ran directly in front of my feet, across the floor from one side of the oven door to the other.  Of course I screamed(though I'm not really afraid of mice), though evidently not very loud as it never woke the cat who was sleeping on the couch.
    I feel I must take action.  I had already looked, admittedly half-heartedly, in Yankee Dollar and Rite Aid for mousetraps, and could find none.  I didn't ask because who wants to admit they have a rodent infestation.  My only recourse was to go outside and retrieve the trap I'd thrown away a few weeks ago with a mouse corpse in it,  the trap in the bag which had mysteriously been torn open and its victim's body removed.
   The trap has been outside in the rain and presumably stripped of all traces of mouse remnants but I spray it with antibacterial cleaner and dab peanut butter on the business part before nestling it on the counter behind the toaster.
   A short time ago, while I was working on the computer, I hear that familiar snap, familiar but still surprisingly loud.  It's followed by a brief spasmodic thrashing sound.  I reach into my supply of plastic grocery bags (I hope they don't do away with them) and put one bag over my hand,  slide the trap and carcass into a second bag, drop the first bag into the second, knot it and drop it into the darkness outside my front door.