Cameron Probert's war against the mice

I hate mice.

Not the little cute ones in the pet store, staring through the glass and running on wheels just so they can cling to them and flip around. I don't hate them because I know where they are. They're in the pet store behind glass, and don't have any chance of getting into the walls of my home, stealing food and leaving little mouse poop all over the place.

No, I'm starting to hate the ones who have managed to find a way into my house.

It started out small, a torn bag of flour in the cabinet. It moved on to my girlfriend finding one in a bag of cereal. Then the mice started to drive our dogs crazy.

We have two hounds in the house and they wanted to get the mice. Maybe "wanted" isn't a strong enough word. Catching the mice seemed to fill some sort of genetic imperative. They went behind the trash can, dug through the cleaning supplies, knocked down the boxes with the hope of catching the mice.

Beau, our basset hound, made it a nightly ritual to stare into the kitchen hoping to catch one. Occasionally, GingerSnap, our dachshund, would join in, and, once the two of them caught one. But mostly they made a mess and the mouse would slip away to wherever it was hiding before it decided to make its foray.

I will give the mice credit. They are persistent, annoyingly persistent. We cleaned everywhere and they dug a hole in the bedroom closet in the middle of the night. We took food out of range, and they'd still run around when we weren't looking. I'd find droppings on the counters, the edges of rooms and on top of the stove.

How they got on top of the stove is still a mystery to me. It gives me images of mice carrying a rope and grappling hook, snagging a burner, and scaling the oven. We didn't just have mice. We had commando mice.

We tried sachets designed to keep mice out of enclosed areas. It didn't work. We tried making sure there wasn't any food available. It didn't work. The final straw was when we were sitting in the living room and we heard a clinking noise coming from the kitchen. My girlfriend went and saw a mouse trying to pick up a bottle cap.

If they weren't going to take the hint and leave voluntarily, we were going to break out the chemical weapons.

We didn't want to inadvertently poison our dogs, because we like our dogs. So we went to the Internet and found a simple solution. Mix some flour, sugar and baking soda, and put it out where the mice can get it.

Mice can't pass gas. So the mix causes a build up of gas, and the mice die. It was beautiful.

OK, I'm sure someone is saying, "Oh, that's cruel," or "Wow, you're taking a bit too much glee from thinking about the suffering of poor defenseless animals."

Maybe I am. On the other hand, wilderness has its place: outside. Millennia of technical advancement should mean nature stays outside and isn't crawling around in my walls.

Before people start feeling too bad for the creatures, let me say, the chemical warfare has only seemed to breed a smarter mouse. It probably killed off the dumber ones, but there is still at least one. I've seen it.

So, unfortunately, I may have contributed in some small way to breeding a super mouse, which will replace humanity as the dominant species on the planet.

Cameron Probert is the Columbia Basin Herald county reporters. He also dislikes Mickey and Minnie, and probably won't admit to finding dog flatulence funny.