M-I-C-K-E-Y-----M-O-U-S-E (Updated again)

UPDATE AGAIN - 12 now. Gross, smelly, dead rodents. Twelve.
UPDATE - we're up to 7 mice now. SEVEN. Lord give me strength.

We moved into our current house almost 2 years ago. It's probably the house we'll retire in. We love it. It has plenty of room, the schools here are top notch, the neighborhood is great, and our neighbors are fantastic. Seriously couldn't ask for anything better.

Until about 3 weeks ago.

When Mickey Mouse and his large extended family moved in.

His large, dead, smelly family moved in.

Our house has a finished basement that has a media room, Spencer's office, a guest bedroom, and a guest bathroom in it. The garage is also down there. It has a dropped ceiling (you know, one of those ceilings with the ceiling tiles in it). Between the dropped ceiling and the underside of the floor above it is what we are now referring to as the "House of Death" for mice. It is not welcoming. There isn't a Motel 6 slogan saying "We'll leave the light on for ya." There aren't little mice slumber parties happening there. It's all death.

And guess what?

When a mouse dies in your house, it STINKS.

And don't even THINK that they can possibly be accommodating to their human hosts (aka, us) and die in a well ventilated, easy to get to place.

Nooooooo. They have to die in a 4 inch space between a wall where the only way to get to their dead, smelly selves is to cut said wall. And they die in pairs. Which doubles the smellyness. And we haven't had dead mice just once. We've had them TWICE. In a 2 week span. We've had to cut 2 walls. We've had to remove 4 (if you notices the updates at the beginning of this post, you'll see that we're up to 12 mice now. Gross.) dead, smelly, decomposing mice carcasses from our walls. We have used the kitchen tongs to get them because THIS CHICK ISN'T ABOUT TO TOUCH A MOUSE CARCASS WITH HER HANDS.

No ma'am, I'm not.

And we've now thrown 2 pairs of tongs away with the smelly mice carcasses. Because if you think I'm gonna use the same tongs to remove dead mice and to serve a nice salad, you are craaazy, my friend.

And did you catch the part where I said they die in pairs? 2 of them together. Can you imagine that mouse conversation as they've trapped themselves in the place of death? It probably went something like this....

"Craaaaaap, George. I told you that jumping into this hole was a bad idea. Didn't you hear about what happened to Vinny and Louis last week? Those human people threw them away in a ziploc bag after they jumped into a hole just like this one. Mom warned us about dark deep holes and you JUST wouldn't listen, would you? Way to go, George."

The exterminator wants to place those horrific glue traps around to catch them. Have you seen those things? The poor mice run on the glue traps and get stuck. They they lay there for days until they die. Stuck to glue. Isn't there a law against doing stuff like that to animals? Or do mice fall into another "humans can be cruel to them without criminal consequences" category? I HATE those things, so I won't let the exterminator put them out. I just can't handle the thought.

However, if any more mice decide to take their eternal nap in my house, I will pull out the glue traps. I'll get over being sad for them and wanting to protect them from the glue. Yes I will.

Maybe.