A Mouse in the House

I guess the title says it all, but here's the story... This morning I went downstairs to the food storage to get a box of cereal. When I opened the door there was a bag of macaroni on the floor. I picked it up and noticed it was no longer full and I thought, "Wow, the boys must have been hungry!" Then I saw that the bag was chewed through and on closer inspection of the shelves found the tell-tale droppings. Yes--we have a mouse in the house and not just any where in the house, this mouse decided to take up residence in my food storage! I patiently?? waited for Bill to come home from his night job and when he walked through the door exclaimed, "You've got to help me. There is a mouse in the food storage!" He, of course, walks patiently downstairs and gets the wheat bags out of the storage room and then declares he needs to get ready for his day job. So, I grab the shop vac and a lantern and head downstairs. I remove a lot of the buckets, of course leaving a clear path to the stairs in case I need to run screaming up the stairs. I got the mess cleaned up, threw away the damaged packages, and set out mouse bait luckily never seeing the little fiend. All in all I figure we have an Italian female mouse since the only things it ate where 4 packages of pasta and a bag of chocolate chips! But then I got to thinking....female mice have babies!!!! Just how fast does a female mouse reproduce? Note to self: Google mouse + reproduction.