Thursday, June 18, 2009

It turns out that mice are opportunistic whether or not the household includes an absent cat...

We had a great time away over the weekend. Kid-crazy, noisy, busy and exhausting, but wonderful.


We got home to find that a mouse that seems to have invaded recently had had a great time too.


But this is not just an ordinary mouse, this is a daring, exploring, frontier mouse. You see he doesn't seem to have a particular home. My Beloved (who has to get to work by 7am and so is up earlier than I am) has seen him in both the lounge room and abseiling from the kitchen bench down the cupboards to the floor. We have found no evidence of where he might be living, but there is mouse poo in multiple locations from my office desk at one end of the house to the kitchen benches and our ensuite handbasin countertop at the other.



Yes, I'm clinging to the vain hope that it is mouse, singular, with bowel trouble, rather than mice, plural. But the sheer quantity of tiny pellets indicates mice, plural. Yes, Russell brought friends. Maybe he decided to relocate his whole family.



And my Beloved and I are not pleased that we have illegal immigrants. But they enjoy the food we put out for their delectation each evening.

Without setting off the trap.

Sneaky.



They have not taken up residence in the pantry where they can be caught by running up my Beloved's trousers.



Now my Beloved has put out other food for them. I'm not certain about baits because I forsee trying in vain to track down the source of dead and decaying rodent smell. But there are times in a woman's life when we just have to allow a husband to make a decision. And make certain to have the vet's number really handy for the occasion that the LBD is the one who tracks down the source of the dead and decaying rodent smell first (the bait is somewhere that he can't get at it).



What I am hoping happens is that I will be able to leave the clean washing up to drain once more. You see, small mice look on stacked clean dishes as a small child would a super-dooper playground. This lead to my best ever clean washing up stack because I had to rewash the cooking dishes that I'd washed up before leaving for the coast, plus the things we'd taken to the coast, plus Sunday night's dishes.




Hopefully, how many mice will we have by this time next week?


... Approximately None.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had hoped that Russell had learnt his lesson and decided to stay away in future.
Mum.

Hippomanic Jen said...

Sadly, no.

Givinya De Elba said...

I agree with Mum. Baits worked for us in the past, the theory being that the mice get thirsty and go outside for water where they die. I hope the same works for you.

Femina said...

Bait worked for me in the vege garden, but I also know plenty of people who've used them and found the rotting carcass later in the back of the wardrobe etc.

That plate stacking is awesome, by the way... except that it's on the wrong side of the sink. ;)

Anonymous said...

Commiserations Jen! We have a lot of bait under our house at the moment - safely out of access for dogs. On the positive side it seems to be limiting the amount that come upstairs. On the negative it means there's 'that smell' in the air until hubby gets home again to dispose of them (unfortunately the aroma is right under our bedroom).

We have also had the mice on the benches experience - which led to discovery of the mice in the saucepan cupboard, lounge seat & anywhere else they could think of experience - which led to the very, very late night washing & cleaning up everything and putting steel wool in any hole we could find that they might have conceivably entered the house through...... Hope you have some success!! Dani

Aleta said...

Ack! Mice! My brother had mice in his house. A family of them! He went into the kitchen at night, turned on the light and he said..."Aleta, the scary thing is that the mice didn't move. They were NOT afraid of me! I was more afraid of them then they were of me!" LMAO Not funny though... He had to get the pest control guy out. The guy located where the mice were most likely coming in from the house and plugged that up and then set traps in the house. Never saw another one. Good luck!!!