The Potato Caper

There is a great mystery taking place in my kitchen and I have a strong suspicion it’s yet another member of the critter world playing games with me.  I have been in super sleuth mode the last week, but have been unable to solve the case.  Even Google doesn’t hold the answer to the clues I have found and searched for.

A short while ago we grabbed our bag of potatoes off the ground to cook with and noticed one of them had been gnawed on. Naturally we assumed the puppy had done it so we moved the bags to a new location.  When we went to use the potatoes again, another one had been chewed on.  We then relocated them to a higher place unreachable by puppies.  Many days passed and our potatoes remained safe.

One day, after awaking from a deep mashed potato slumber, we found a potato that had been left on the counter, still on the counter, but with a big chunk chewed away.  This is when my heart skipped a beat, because the puppy had been in her crate all night! The curious thing is that there was other food left on the counter, including a pie and nothing else was touched.  What kind of beast only goes for raw potatoes?!

Thinking we had a mouse on our hands we took all our food out of our open pantry, but saw no signs of anything else being eaten or chewed on.  We have not found any droppings either.  I am open to the thought that it could be some kind of bug since there are so many weird ones here in California.  We let a few more days pass and with our potatoes all gone, we didn’t have any more incidents.  We set a mouse trap with peanut butter, which is supposed to be the most effective bait but we didn’t catch anything and the peanut butter remained in tact.

Eventually having bought more potatoes for Christmas, we decided to do a test.  We put out a few food items and left a potato at the foot of our stairs.  Sure enough, in the morning, only the potato had been gnawed on!  Now we’re thinking we have some kind of well read mouse who’s on a potato only diet for some life enhancing reason.  This same mouse must only poop in a golden box somewhere, because we still haven’t seen any droppings.

We set the mouse trap again, but with a small piece of potato on it instead of peanut butter.  The next morning, the potato piece was gone, but the trap was still intact with no critter!  Last night we tried again, but we tied the potato piece to the trap so it would be impossible to pick it off and escape.  This morning we found that the trap had been triggered, but nothing was in it…and the potato was gone!  What am I dealing with here?!?!