When will it end?

We've been mouse-trapping for a couple of months now. The trap works great, that's the good part. The bad part is the mice keep showing up!

When we first realized that we had a tiny visitor in our apartment, we assumed 1. Not 10!

I thought we could deal with one mouse, but my husband said they could easily multiple. I read some books about rats (their bigger relatives, and thank god for those creatures not showing up in our apartment!!). Their gestation period is 21 days and each litter is around 20 pups! Yikes.

I must say the situation is better now because in the beginning we saw more than one mouse at a time. Now it seems only one appears. Well, if they keep appearing one by one, this is no consolation but...

Anyway, I didn't want to kill them. The landlord calls in an exterminator once a month. We never let him come into our apartment. All he does is to spray some stuff. We have two little dogs, we'd never risk their safety. Plus the fact the exterminator has to return every month, he isn't doing too good of a job. I know it's New York thing. Rats and mice are everywhere.

Why are they so repulsive? Their face is kind of cute. Really. The ones that show up in our place are very small. The size varies slightly, but they are little. Smaller than my thumb. Some of them are really cute. The tail, however, isn't. It's wormy-like appearance is so gross. Even the cute little mouse has a gross tail. Why is that? If they had a cute tail like a squirrel, I don't think people would consider them vermin (maybe...)!

Whenever we catch one, we take it to Central Park and release it to the "wild". So far, we've done this 8 times. Ugh. Every time we hope this is the last time. Although I don't want them in my house, I'd never kill an innocent living thing. I just can't. The mousetrap is called, "humane mousetrap" literally. It's a simple machine and works 100%, which we bought it through Amazon.com. We always caught one the night we set it. Wait, one mouse spent a couple of days tip-toeing around the trap. He was a gourmet! He didn't fall for the little bread crumb. So we put some people food - and voila, it worked. He was caught. We named him Brain.

Yup, I also named them too. I like naming things in general. My husband and I call the mice that appear in apartment "Mickey". Obviously from Mickey Mouse. Then the first time we realized we had a "Mickey", we named him Remy. Remy from the movie, "Ratatouille". Because we caught him eating the leek in the kitchen. That's how we saw him the first time. But he wasn't alone. He had company...

So far we named 8. Hopefully we have no more use for the trap. We'll see about that I guess...

1. Boss (he was "Remy" initially because we thought there was only one mouse. I said, " he looks bigger than the time I saw him nibbling on the leek". It turned out he wasn't Remy. Remy was the second one we caught (we think). So being bigger, we named him Boss.)
2. Remy
3. Gray (she had beautiful gray coat - like mink! Obviously we don't know the sex of these mice, but she was cuter and much smaller and had different color, we figured she's a girl!)
4. Enough (after Gray, we thought we caught them all. We were so wrong. We were just fed up with this mouse trapping business. So appropriately named him "Enough"!)
5. Emile (he was named for Emile, Remy's cousin in Ratatouille. Because he was SO not bright. He was caught during the day, when I was a couple of feet away.)
6.Tiny (he was the tiniest we caught "so far".)
7. Brain (he was very smart, took a few days to catch. Tip-toeing around the trap. We really did hear his tiny foot steps <- because they walk around on stovetop. Their nails make noise. Maybe should've named him "Gourmet")
8. Poopy (he was little and cute. But he pooped so much in the trap!)

The mouse in the picture is Poopy, after being released in the park today.He didn't scurry off like others. He was actually exploring, cleaning his face, taking his time. Thank goodness for the nice weather.