We had visitors the night before and being tired I just put the chocolate biscuits our friends had brought with them into the pantry uncovered.... fast forward to mid morning the next day and my daughter goes to the pantry thinking she would have a biscuit and to her shock, horror, there was a mouse beside the biscuits...
Our hero, spider and creepy crawly catcher.... hubby, was away in Sydney so we had a problem, then our neighbor appeared... we call him Wilson after the neighbor in the tv show home improvements... they are identical right down to the hat.  He is offering me a shrub the size of my car and I am nicely trying to say no thanks while he is offering to dig a hole to put it in, so I tell him about my mouse problem... Wilson is a retired Engineering lecturer from the local Uni so he went into great detail on what I should do to catch this critter. Well, first off we needed a mouse trap so off Nicole went to the village store and fortunately they had one.  Now we are sitting at the dining table reading the instructions to this contraption and doing practise runs. Time now to put it in the pantry but before we do that we have to cook a piece of steak, Wilson said we needed to do that so as to put some of the melted fat on the trap.  While the steak was cooking we discussed which of us was going to put the trap in the pantry and if/when we caught this mouse who was going to dispose of it.   Soon the trap was ready with fat smeared in it and as I won the debate I got the broom and pushed the trap very carefully into the pantry... We didn't have to wait long before we heard the trap go off.  I rush outside to get the shovel for Nicole to carry it to the bin... we had decided to throw both the trap and mouse out as neither of us wanted to touch it.  To our surprise when I dragged out the trap with the broom it was empty.  So, this time we decided  I should put a tiny bit of steak on the trap, again it wasn't long before the trap went off and, you guessed it the steak was gone. but still no mouse.  In the meantime a friend rang and I told Pete of our drama so he offered to come over with his shotgun if I was so desperate to be rid of it!  I am now getting tired of this mouse and think I will outsmart it and soak a cotton wool ball in the fat from the steak and use thread and tie it to the trap...  Nicole and I sat in the lounge in silence so we could hear the trap go off.  To our dismay it never did..... The mouse just disappeared!!  Friends say it left in disgust.  We kept mouse watch for a few days but never saw it again.... To this day I am still trying to live down having cooked steak for a mouse!