Mice, again

Two mice issues.
One dead, one living.

We happily housed Speedy and Aisha for quite some time and then Aisha passed to the next realm, as mice, and all things do. After a couple of weeks, we decided to replace her with a new tenant, Azul (apparently her favorite color was blue.) Speedy became very territorial and mercilessly attacked poor little Azul. We started by interrupting them each time Speedy attacked, then moved Azul to her own box for a night and tried again. More attacks ensued, so Speedy got her night in the new box and Azul got a night in the cage. Tried again and the attacks became less frequent, so we decided to just let them fight it out. Well, two days later Azul joined Aisha at the giant cheese wheel.

That same day, a short time after tossing Azul outside, I see a brown mouse, that I did not pay money for, scurrying across my kitchen floor. So now my dilemma is that I like living mice, just not outside of my cage. I don't want to kill this new addition, but I prefer her to not be in my home running free. Off to the hardware store I go to get live traps. An hour or so after placing them, I catch her. Yea! I decide to put her in Azul's box. Turns out, wild mice are WAY faster than tame mice. She jumped out of the trap the second I opened it and out of the box before I could slam the lid on. A couple hours later, I caught her again. Yea! Take two ends much the same way, I am much more careful and put the lid on as fast as humanly possible - mousely possibly is apparently quite a bit faster. So I re-set the traps and go to bed. About 6:00 am I hear rustling in the trap. This time, I have gotten a bit smarter, and put the unopened trap in the box and take it to the back porch before opening it. I manage to get the mouse out of the trap and the lid on with no mishap. I tell the kids about the cute little mouse I found and as soon as we get to the house, they go to look. They find an empty box. I don't know how, but that little mouse is quite an escape artist! The good news is that she escaped outside and I have not seen her since (I did re-set the traps just in case.)