How to catch Mice

So, this is a weird thing to write about, but here is my reasoning for writing it here: It does involve food, it would probably be tasty for people to eat too, some people have mice problems and would be grateful for a good recipe that works, this recipe should be recorded somewhere to be passed on through the generations, and I need to write more in this blog, so here goes.

This is my mom's tried and true recipe for bait to put on mouse traps. You will need:

Marshmallows (just a couple mini's will do)
Small, mouse-bite-sized Cereal (like grape-nuts cereal, or just crush some cheerios or whatever you have on hand, it shouldn't be dust, just small chunks)
Peanut butter

Melt the marsmallows a little on a small plate in the microwave, just till they are warm and gooey. Mix in the cereal, and a little peanut butter. It should still be plenty sticky. Sorry there are no exact measurements, but it's pretty impossible to do it wrong, so don't worry. Smear little dabs of the concoction onto the traps, carry them to where you want to set them. Be sure to set the traps very, very carefully, holding the safe end of the trap so if it snaps when you set it down, it won't get your fingers. Check traps every day, once you get a mouse, they get stinky pretty quick.

Why this works: The peanut butter smells good to mice, it is really what attracts them. It would be great if you could just smear some right onto the trap and just use that, but those tiny little mice can lick it right off the trap without springing it. It's amazing. So, the cereal gives the mouse something to bite into, which will help spring the trap, and the marshmallow helps sticky it on, just to be sure.

*Update* I just yesterday had the pleasure of trying this out. I had heard a mouse eating something in my pantry in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago and I thought I saw it in the daytime 2 days ago as well. Unfortunately the landlady's cat wasn't interested in catching it for me when she (the cat) came to visit, so it was up to me. I used some crumbs of Special K blueberry cereal that we had just finished the box, and I mixed the gooey marshmallows with the cereal and smeared it on to the trap, then I smeared a dab of peanut butter on top of all of it. It worked like a charm. At 2 AM I heard it snap, but here was a surprise, it was a very large rodent, probably a rat, and the mousetrap isn't designed for larger rodents, so the thing was somehow still alive and squirming around in a very noisy manner. It was extremely disturbing. My wonderful Lovemuffin ended up taking it outside and letting it out somehow; it limped away and the cat (who had been watching in a very interested manner) darted after it. I cleaned out my pantry, and in order to discourage any more vermin from calling it home I put everything that isn't canned in large plastic storage containers, something I had thought about doing a couple of weeks ago, but had decided that it wasn't necessary since we don't have mice. Ha. I discovered the the only thing the rodent was interested in eating was, of course, the most expensive thing available, the unopened 5 pound bag of jasmine rice.