eek!

matt and i discovered something rather unpleasant this weekend.  i was cleaning up in the kitchen when i noticed some hershey's hugs wrappers laying on the counter.  i yelled out to matt, "hey, are you eating hugs and leaving the wrappers laying around?"  he replied, "no, why would i do that?"  i figured that would be my answer, and as i pulled stuff off the counter to investigate further, sure enough, there were some little itty-bitty mouse poopies. 

source: from orkin

shit.  [literally]

"matt," i yelled, "i think we have a problem."  the poopies and wrappers were on the part of our counter where we keep our toaster oven and toaster.  i took them off the counter and discovered even more poopies and wrappers underneath them.  who knew that mice liked sweets?  gross.

so we cleaned everything off the counter and then set a trap with peanut butter.  and then we yelled at padfoot and told her to do her job.  [just kidding]

anyway, i woke up sunday morning to a little mouse on the trap.  but we set it again because - you know - where there's one, there are always more.  so i woke up this morning and we had another one.  this one was still alive, so i carefully carried it outside and left it out there.  no way was i gonna try to release it and have it go scampering all over me!  no thanks!

look, i know that there are more humane ways to catch a mouse, like the little mouse house things where the mouse goes in and then a door closes and traps it inside.  i get that a mouse trap is barbaric and mean.  but i don't want to re-release a live mouse into my yard where - newsflash! - it will probably just come right back into my house.  besides, mice are dirty and are disease-carriers.  i would rather just kill it and have it no longer be a threat to my home. 

short of calling an exterminator or setting a field of traps, any advice on how to handle our little problem?