The best laid plans of Men triumphed.

Mice.  An unpleasant but unfortunately common reality of tenement dwelling.  I actually consider us to have been fairly lucky to have lived here over two years without having any problems with them.  Yes, Alex did get a bit of a scare one morning several months ago when he pulled back the shower curtain and found one trapped in the bathtub, but apart from that we've had no other encounters of the murine kind.  Until now.  So down to Homebase (or BaseHome as Chloe calls it) we went to buy some mousetraps.  Alex came out with an assortment, all of which were recommended by the bloke in the store as being pretty reliable at catching the blighters.  There was a humane live-capture contraption and a couple of back-snappers just in case.  Peanut butter was widely advised as a good choice of bait so on it went.  We set the traps, laid them out and waited.  And continued to wait.  Then we waited some more.  Nada.  Zilch.  Sweet F.A.  

You want to know how to really catch mice?  I'll tell you.  You need a large bucket (a clear one with a lid is ideal), a long USB cord, a PEZ dispenser and some honey roast peanuts.  Then you set it up like this:

Then you sit next to the other end of the USB cord whilst watching a movie and you wait.  We left the Homebase traps out for about 10 days with not even a nibble.  Alex put this out for a few hours and then, as I laid in bed feeding Ben at 1am, brought me this:

So.  That worked.