The House mouse

That furry little blur you just saw zip across in front of your fireplace? Those brown, rice-shaped droppings behind the refrigerator? O.K., how much trouble can a couple of mice be?

Well, a single year a female mouse can have 5 to 10 litters of 5 or 6 young each. In 10 weeks, those babies will be mature enough to repeat the process. Assume half the litter is male, the other half female. You do the math.

There's more. Though mice have dietary preferences – grains, cereal, even peanut butter – they'll basically settle for anything they can get. They can climb vertically up just about any rough surface; navigate cables like the guy who walked across Niagara Falls, jump about a foot high, and crawl through holes you could sharpen a pencil in. Oh, and they use your insulation for nests and contaminate your food with their droppings; they can cause structural damage by chewing on wood and a safety hazard by gnawing on your wires.

Think you might want to get rid of them?

"To control mice, you must think like a mouse,” most experts in rodent control, say the best way to keep mice out of your house is, well, to keep them out. In other words, any opening larger than, say, a pencil, should be sealed. For most people – including those who just don't have the patience to crawl around looking for quarter-inch openings — rodent control consists of catching the mice quickly and efficiently.

Rodent control falls into two basic categories: traps and poisons.

Traps vary from the familiar Victor snap trap — made from a piece of wood, a tightly wound spring and a platform that holds the bait — to elaborate multiple-catch gizmos that can catch and hold an entire clan of mice. In between are newer, plastic traps that are easier to set; traps that catch mice but don't kill them; and the nasty but effective glue board, which holds the mouse until it dies.

Favored baits vary. First, forget cheese; few experts recommend it. Peanut butter, a cotton ball with a few drops of vanilla flavoring, even strips of bacon are recommended. (It might be helpful to pre-bait a trap – put the bait on the trap but don't arm it at first, so the mice think it's a nice, safe place to get food.) And, the experts say, one or two traps aren't going to do the trick. If you have mice, you have to blitz them.

Then there are poisons, or "rodenticides."

Most poisons are blood thinners: the mice eat it, might even share it with their nest mates, and basically bleed to death internally.

For those who would prefer to "catch and release," just remember, unless you live on a farm in the country and can take them far, far away, the first thing those mice you release are going to do is look for a quarter-inch hole in a nice, warm house. It might even be yours.