I spent over two hours tonight scouring the net for good-sized Maxfield Parrish paintings. It's been years since I saw a big museum exhibit about him, and I'd sort of forgotten how breathtaking some of his work can be.

Next time you're in SF go to the bar named Maxfield's. They've got a huge one - The Pied Piper - behind the bar.

That Calvin-christopher Robin link was gold.

P-C, awesome reviews! You are rocking the end of 2011!

We have mice -- or at least a mouse, so I assume multiple meeses -- in the kitchen, and they are eating my damned potholders AND they nibbled on a bar of TJ's dark chocolate with sea salt I had stashed in a drawer for Dan.

So I cleaned all the edibles out of the drawers, moved potholders to top of fridge, figuring they would move on. Also? I HAVE FOUR FUCKING CATS. WTF?

Nope. Mouse turds in drawers still, so I got two wooden snaptraps from mom, baited them last night with peanut butter. They nabbed the PB, set off traps, but no dead mice. Bitches. So I reset them this afternoon with fudge, figuring it would be stickier and more likely to snap. Fuckers got the fudge.

Tonight, I used a smidge of jelly, and carefully arranged the traps in an unbalanced corner with an obstacle of rolling objects and unbalanced matchboxes. If they manage that, I'm going to buy tiny land mines.

IT'S ON, BITCHES! No one fucks with my potholders.

Seriously, if these traps don't work, anyone have recs? Throw the outdoor cat in the cabinets all night with a litterbox and no food? Napalm?

Also? I HAVE FOUR FUCKING CATS. WTF?

Lazy cats, I'll warrant.

Oh, yeah, our cats just stare at the mice, fascinated. My old Koogie would share the food bowl with them, chewing contentedly as they nibbled from the other side of the bowl.

I suspect we're just contributing the evolution of smarter, more nimble mice with the traps.

INORITE?

Earn your keep, furballs. Granted, the mice are in the drawers and cabinets.

I'd poison the bait, if they are eating it, then let them eat something that will kill them.

The only problem with poison is they wander off and die in your walls and then you have dead mouse smell for a while. It does go away, but till it does, yup. Dead mouse smell. Once known, never forgotten. Also, No Sticky Traps!

Erin, you might want to go a size up in spring traps. If they're really healthy cagey mice, a trap with a harder spring and a bigger kill bar may work better. Good luck!

Maybe just one successful trap will do the trick. When I had my mouse problem, I caught several with those humane traps, then finally got Daredevil!Mouse with a lethal one, and his broken body left out overnight seemed to convince any others that may have been around to look for greener pastures.

Oh the mice/squirrels at my brothers are totally foiling the traps they have. I kinda think they aren't actually coming into the kitchen, just disgorging insulation from the walls. Which...uhg.

Devi's a known mousekiller. The rest? I have no idea. They've not been tested.

Drugs are kinda winning against the bug. However, at the cost of a good night's sleep. Going to telecommute at least half the day. Will see.

We had a horrible experience with a spring trap in CA. it scraped off half the mouse's head but left the thing bleeding and running around. After multiple attempts to kill it, Joe finally ran over it with our car tire. The next time around we used a trap that catches them live and I released it in a field away from the house. The kids thought that was fun and thankfully, there wasn't blood everywhere.