Mice - 21 down...

Seriously. 21 down. I have caught 21 mice this winter. Isn't that great? You'd think that my experience catching mice in the fields at the Idaho National Laboratory for science work would prepare me for this but nope, it's a little different in your living space. Any of you caught mice before? There is something about feeling violated. They really look harmless but I can't help but be grossed out. My kitchen is deep-cleaned on a daily basis and my wood floors are always spotless because I feel so dirty when I find them. so here's the story:

This fall, we noticed our crawl space door was broken. Great. We called a pest control company and they came to set traps. I knew there were mice in our house but I had no idea how many. We were catching 1-2 daily. At least the traps were working then. At this point, Kelsey wasn't crawling so I wasn't worried too much about her. I kept feeling a draft behind our dishwasher so I convinced my landlord to take a look. There is a reason why you should never gut out a 1940s kitchen. You never know what you'll find or what you'll break. There was a huge hole going down to the crawl space. I could have fit into this hole. The landlord was shocked. After covering the hole, I hoped we would see a slow-down in mice and we did for a few weeks. Fast forward to after the holidays. I started hearing the scurrying again but this time near my head. They were running around behind the cabinets. They were so comfortable that they'd do it when I was in the kitchen. Every night, we'd see proof of them making their way to the countertops. However, they finally figured out the traps and no matter where we set them or what we put in them (corey got the great idea to put his kitkat in them after he noticed claw marks on the kitkats), we never could catch them. This has been going on for a month and it's so frustrating. Well, this morning, I woke up to find a mouse in the middle of our bathroom floor. Yuck. After calling my dad and giving myself a few pep talks out loud, I removed the mouse with a pyrex dish and a piece of paper. I hate mice. Hate them. I'm hoping that number 21 is the last of them but the realistic side of me says there are more. And Kelsey is a crawler and picks up the tiniest things, which always makes me worried about what she's picking up...

Anyway, if you are still reading this, do you have any ideas? We've done the poison bait but they don't seem to care for it (except for number 21 apparently) and I'm nervous about those ones for Kelsey's sake. Anyone?

And since I haven't posted in forever, here is a picture from the other thing that gets my heart rate going - Kelsey climbing our super steep wood stairs. It's her favorite activity. Sorry for the blurry pic; it was taken with a phone.