Three Dead Mice

One morning this week I woke up and just outside the bedroom a small mouse was dragging itself across the carpet. It didn't run from me. It looked sick and just about to drop. I put it out of its misery, bagged it and emptied the bag outside for the ghoul squad.

In the kitchen fixing breakfast, I saw a small dead mouse curled up almost beneath the stove and did a double-take. I had just dumped a mouse outside! It couldn't have fallen from the bag on the way out; I saw it plop from the bag into the grass! Using barbecue tongs, I put this body outside. Went about my business. Later in the living room, I smelled that funny dead-mouse-rotting smell, as if it were right in the room. Looked with a flashlight beneath the couch and such. Nothing. Hoped it would go away on its own, knowing it never does. I went out all evening, and back home went straight to bed.

Today, opening the shade in the living room I looked down among the computer cables and there's a little dead mouse curled up there and that's what stunk.

That first mouse looked poisoned, but I don't use mouse poison any more, precisely because poisoned mice die in inaccessible places like the attic or beneath the water heater, and stink for as long as six weeks. I use traps. So what's going on? Was there a nest? I can't find it. Were they family? They were pretty well grown, completely formed and furred, able to make their way; why aren't they surviving?