Mus musculus ssp. domesticus

These little rodents managed to somehow get into my house, now that the weather gets down below freezing at night, and not much above it during the day. I've never before had a mouse infestation. Spiders, ants, hornets, and very rarely cockroaches, but never mice. We caught two of them--brown and white like you see to the left. One was nailed by a mouse trap that SJ brought with him from his old house. We baited it last night with peanut butter. Whammo! One dead in the morning with a bit of a splat on the kitchen floor in front of the dishwasher. Early afternoon while I was at work, SJ came down the stairs and saw another one sitting on the rug in my foyer. Whammo, again, but he used one of my hunting boots to hammer it. That may be all we have. My cat's completely useless for actually catching them.

I've never seen ones before that have such clearly delineated light brown backs and milky white bellies, with white bulls-eyes on their butts. I'm used to the ones that run around office buildings in NYC. Those have always appeared solid gray to me like this other one. I actually cornered a gray one at work a good 10 years ago, picked it up by its tail, dropped it into an interoffice envelope, then took it out to the street and dumped it out on W. 23rd St. in Chelsea.

Let's hope those two were the end of it. Last thing I need is one that dies behind the dishwasher and starts to stink up the place.