Vegan Endurance Mice meet the Trigger Point Performance Roller

A few weeks ago GK saw a mouse in our house. His response was to lock Elsie in the bathroom which accomplished absolutely nothing, only resulting in a confused dog. I didn't think too much of it until I came home one evening and saw a little mouse in my bedroom scurry into a hole near our closet. GK patched the hole up. Then, a few days later as I was getting ready for my long run I found this:

That was my mocha flavored endurance bar from http://vegasport.com/ that I had been saving for a challenging long run. I had been storing it in my closet along with my running gear. Fast forward a week and I started to notice an.... odd smell in my closet. I did some investigating and found that the mouse had invaded my stash of shotblocks, gels, and drink powders. At this point it was on with this well nourished, energized, vegan mouse.

A few years ago I thought I had a mouse problem at my old place and purchased these humane traps that I found on the PETA website. Turns out we had some other type of critter that was quickly evicted by our landlord after a small hole was patched up so I never caught anything. I pulled the traps out of storage, made some peanut butter crackers, and placed one in my closet.

 These traps don't hurt the mouse. Just isolates it and then you relocate it elsewhere after it has had a complimentary meal. I had visions of walking Elsie to a park or field to relocate the little sucker.

However, after a day of no mice in the smart trap-my closet still smelled, a smell I just couldn't explain. GK commented a few times that maybe a mouse had expired in my closet. I realized that I needed to take a closer look since I had cleaned up all the fuel/food that had been in my closet. And I found a very sad situation. Two mice had somehow got trapped in my Trigger Point Performance Roller (used to roll out sore muscles associated with exercise) that I had placed upright in the closet.

The slick plastic on the inside prevented them from escaping and my guess is that they succumbed to starvation. What a terrible way to go. What is also sad is that this also tells you how often I use my roller. I provided the two mice a proper burial that included a Tom's shoebox casket in the compost bin.  I now plan to store my roller on its side and keep all food items out of my closet in order to keep these little guys at bay.