Build a Better Mouse Trap?

This is neither Magical Face nor a tale of 'Rent woe. This is how the spouse and I caught and killed a mouse.

Let me preface this by also stating that we have 4 CATS. In spite of the mouse being in the house for what I NOW realize as being a week. A week, of a mouse in MY HOUSE with 4 cats that did nothing but sit and stare at inanimate objects for all of that time. They were on alert but did nothing to let the two legged house inhabitants know that something was not as it should be.

Last Thursday night the cats went from staring at the fridge to staring at the vacuum.
And staring.
And staring.
And staring.
I moved the vacuum and saw nothing amiss. My spouse moved the vacuum and saw nothing amiss. Apparently the spouse is more determined than I am to figure out the feline mind as he moved the vacuum again and low and behold there was the live and scared to immobility, mouse. I will add that the felines have a bad time of losing their catnip mice under furniture that they can't retrieve if from FREQUENTLY so we both assumed this was once again the case. Nope. REAL. LIVE. MOUSE. So he gets me up at 1:00 AM for us to trap and set the mouse free. I fail to see NOW how we were going to do this, but at the time it seemed BRILLIANT.

So here I am armed with a large plastic container and a plastic flexible cutting board. Somehow we are going to scare the mouse out of hiding in the vacuum and then PIN IT UNDER THE CONTAINER. Once that feat of agility was accomplished we planned to slip the cutting board UNDER the container and the little mouse feet and set it free into the wilds of the back yard.

The spouse moves the vacuum and I am set to pounce, only no mouse.
We flip the vacuum and no mouse.
We shake the vacuum and no mouse.
At this point I say, "Let's take it outside and shake it, maybe it will run out.". So we do, and still no mouse.
We take the hose off the vacuum so there is no suction action and see if perhaps the mouse has retreated upwards through the vacuum in search of safe haven. No mouse.

Spouse: "Should we turn it on?"
Me: "Why not, it should run away from the beater brush I would think."
Spouse: "OK, let me plug this in and then turn it on and step back."
Me: "OK."

So I turn it on, and step away. Still no mouse.
Once again to the flipping, shaking, checking every opening moves.

I finally take the hose and put it back on and we here, "TWUMP!" (that is the closest approximation of the sound I can articulate).
There in the clear canister I see little mouse feet and a tail go flying by.
We shut off the vacuum and look at each other.

Me: "Well that worked, now what do we do? I don't think it lived through that."
Spouse: "Do we want to try to let it go?"
Me: "I don't want to see if it didn't make it through the suction storm. You can try to let it go but I am thinking we just dispose of it."

So the spouse went and dumped the vacuum canister and it was not spoken of again.

So you don't need a better mouse trap, apparently a vacuum will work in a pinch.

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