Well, they couldn't possibly build a WORSE mousetrap, right?

I did not give up trying the first time a mousetrap snapped shut on my fingers, or the fourth or the fifth or the sixth. Getting into double digits discouraged me but I kept trying until I started throwing things, and then I had to clean up the peanut-butter smears on my hands and shirt and on the floor. (What are the odds that a falling mousetrap will land peanut-butter-side up?)

When my husband and I first began this adventure with living (mostly) in separate houses, I knew I would face challenges, but I did not believed dealing with the mouse problem would be the most serious one. We've worked out a way to make it easier for me to load the wood-burner, and we're contracting out snow removal for the winter. I've learned to avoid buying large amounts of produce because I can't eat it all by myself and I hate the smell of rotting vegetables, and I even managed to bury my own dog when she died. But somehow the mouse problem has me flummoxed.

I've caught mice! (In traps my husband set the last time he was here.) I experimented with glue traps, which work admirably except for one thing: the mice do not die immediately, which means I have to either live with an expiring mouse squirming around trying to free itself or else I have to toss the whole thing into the wood-burner while the mouse is still alive, which seems inhumane. I can hear its squeaky little voice screaming No! Not the fire! Anyplace but the fire!

So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and learn to set the old-fashioned wooden mousetraps that work so well. I read the directions and even watched a YouTube video that made it look really easy. That guy never got his fingers snapped in the trap! And besides, people have been using those mousetraps for centuries without a hitch. How difficult could it be?

I used exactly the same brand of trap the guy used in the YouTube video, and I followed his method exactly--and I snapped my fingers in the trap EVERY. STINKING. TIME. 

Maybe the traps are defective--or maybe it's my fingers. Either way, no mousetraps got set in my house last night, which will no doubt make the pesky critters bolder. I hear them scrabbling in the walls, laughing, no doubt, at my incompetence: 

How many PhDs does it take to set a mousetrap? None because they can't do it!

She can split an infinitive at 50 paces but can't set a mousetrap!

Hey, let's have a square dance on her eyeballs while she's sleeping! 

In the war between my klutzy fingers and the vermin, the mice seem to be winning. However, I have a secret weapon, and no, it's not a flamethrower, tempting as that may be. My husband is coming home later this week, and he takes no prisoners. So look out, mice! There's a trap in your future and it will be fully loaded. (With bits of my fingers.)