If this column were a movie, it would come with a clutch of trigger warnings: discrimination, scenes of violence, injury detail. I’m not by nature in favour of killing, but sometimes you are driven to it. Or that’s my story, anyway.

When we moved to the country, I found an old mousetrap at the back of the hot water tank cupboard in the room where I work. I binned it, without another thought.

A couple of years later, entering the kitchen one winter’s morning I snapped on the light and found myself eye to eye with a little creature that had emerged from the warmth behind the boiler. Only its snout, whiskers and bright eyes were visible but as I stared, instead of turning tail it tiptoed across the floorboards towards me, as if to take a better look. Clearly what it saw was not a predator wielding the power of life and death over it and all rodent-kind, but a provider of cheese, chocolate and, in an ideal world, organic peanut butter.

By lunchtime, the gaps around the boiler had been plugged with steel wool, and as weeks passed without further visitors it seemed our problems were over. Then, sometime later, I returned to my desk after making a coffee, and discovered a pile of chewed rubber by my laptop. In the time it takes for a kettle to boil my pencil’s eraser had been shredded.

There was a noise from the corner of the room, where the culprit was taking shelter behind a pile of books. A quick dash to a neighbour produced a humane mouse trap, which I baited to no avail. After several days of catching nothing, it seemed the creature had taken flight.

Read more: Rosemary Goring: Oh, no, Frasier. Why does Trump appeal to folk like Kelsey Grammer?

Since then I would sporadically hear faint sounds coming from the direction of our attic, above my desk. I assured myself it was the blue tits, which use our gutters and chimney pots as launching pads. Then one autumn afternoon, a few weeks ago, there was no mistaking the rustling. Without doubt, there was something in the rafters.

Proof came when I cleared out the tank cupboard and found the base of my favourite handbag shredded. This was no mere exploratory nibble. Courtesy of a Florentine leather emporium, a full banquet had been enjoyed. Goodbye handbag. Even more importantly, time to say goodbye to the night-time snackers.

By now, we had bought our own traps. They look a bit like grey wheelie bins or coffins, and work on the principle that once the mouse has reached the bait at its end, the trap tilts, the lid closes, and it cannot escape until liberated. Daubed with peanut butter, the traps were primed and ready. Before dawn, both had been visited, and one was shut. We had caught our uninvited guest.

With mice, you are meant to set them free at least two miles away, so they don’t return to their old haunts. One friend takes those she catches at her parents’ house to Carter Bar, on the border, where they can choose between an English or Scottish future.

That being too far, we drove to a bijou village four miles distant. We opened the trap beside a cornfield near a picturesque church, certain that any woodland creature would find more than enough to eat here, not to mention a welcoming church-going community.

I lifted the lid and a field mouse sprang through the air as if on springs. It darted into the undergrowth and was gone, all but giving us the finger. At that speed, had it been fitted with satnav, it would have been back in our house in under the hour. As it was, we hoped it would find new chums, settle down happily and forget all about us.

The next mouse we returned to the wild was in a sorrier state: bedraggled, traumatised, quivering as it crept out onto the grass and realised its incarceration was over. They call these traps humane, but I am not convinced.

Thereafter, the real battle commenced. Early each morning I would find the traps flung around the cupboard as if something had been juggling with them. The lid of one had been gnawed, tiny teeth leaving a miniature version of a grizzly bear’s claw marks on the log cabin door. Another day, a lid had been wrenched off and lay at a distance. Meanwhile, the bait from both traps was licked clean, this mousy escape artist working on the SAS principle of getting in and getting out so fast you are barely detected.

Day after day I gave the critter another chance. The peanut butter jar was emptying fast, while we had the unsettling feeling that somewhere behind the wainscot our little Houdini was sleeping off his dinner, dreaming about the next day’s menu. Eventually there was no option but to move things up a gear.

Read more: Rosemary Goring: Once respected, now reviled: Who would be a teacher nowadays?

Killer traps are not pleasant, but they do the job. The range of devices in our local garden centre is comprehensive, based on the same principles that made the French Revolution such a success. I settled on one that promised an instant and humane death. Next morning there was a stiff little corpse to be disposed of: a lovely little beast, with a pale belly, glossy brown fur and dead, staring eyes. Another two swiftly went the same way, although I found one in a pool of raspberry coloured blood, which rather ruined breakfast.

The growing tally, however, was troubling. Hereabouts, people accept occasional incursions of mice as inevitable. They don’t freak out as you would in a city. Even so, there are limits. Were we about to rival a neighbour who had recently despatched 24, and saw no signs of let-up? Just how long would this go on?

The answer, it seems, is until we stuffed all the cracks and gaps in the wainscot and around our hot water pipes with a barrier of tooth-defying steel wool. This done, the pests seem to have departed for a winter’s break.

Of course I don’t think they are truly gone. They will be somewhere behind the walls or in the attic, enjoying our central heating as they coorie in for the cold months ahead. But at least they are no longer roaming free. Even better, we can once again call our peanut butter our own.