Trapped
I woke up to a loud scrabbling sound this morning. “Gotcha!”, I thought. Reel back a couple of weeks, and Mr. Bsag is showing me a cherry tomato which has a ragged hole in it. He thought that it had burst, but it had a suspiciously nibbled quality to my eyes. Sure enough, when I got a torch out and looked down the little gaps by the side of the kitchen cabinets, I found the tell-tale signs of a mouse. I’m extremely sceptical about the concept of a singular mouse, so let’s say mice.
How could this have happened? We keep a clean house, and we don’t leave food lying around (the tomatoes were in a vegetable basket, and were the only items of food not in a box or container). Still, the biologist in me knows that the little critters can get in anywhere and take advantage of whatever they find, and when winter starts biting, even field mice sometimes take shelter in houses. I cleaned even more obsessively, and vowed to “Get those meeces!”
Regular readers will know that I don’t like killing anything unnecessarily, so I went to the local garden centre to buy a live trap (it’s like my biology field trip all over again, but without the garlic). As I was standing in the queue, the guy behind me told me that the traps are very effective, but that you have to release the mice some distance away. “I’m sure I’ve been catching the same little bugger for a couple of weeks.” But I know all about homing mice, and I’ve even tracked them. They’re going to need a taxi to get back from my release location.
The instructions suggest peanut butter as a bait. I don’t have any peanut butter, but I find a jar of mincemeat from the dawn of time in the back of the cupboard, and try that. Well, it’s fruit and fatâthe mice will love it. Wrong. Mice will keep away from anything smelling that strongly of poisonous alcoholâI really should have known that. I go to the shops and buy some peanut butter, grumbling about spending good money to feed the mice. After a couple of nights of no-shows, and one spectacularly cheeky mouse who ate all the peanut butter and breezed out of the trap without triggering it, finally I had a bite!
I picked the trap up gently, and it felt warm. I could feel the mouse’s high tension heart thrumming against the plastic. Such a tiny creature, but so much life in it. I was keen to try to release it in the dark so that it would have a couple of hours to find somewhere to hide, and traipsed out to the local recreation ground (plenty of thick shrubs, undergrowth and trees), trying to not look suspicious.
I laid the trap on the ground and opened the lid. Nothing. I tipped it up a bit, and heard needle-like claws scrabbling for purchase on the smooth plastic. It seems that little mouse rather likes his warm, dark, peanut butter-equipped home. Sorry, mateâyou have to go in to the big, wide world. Finally, he shot out like a furry bullet, and disappeared into the shrubbery. Be safe, but don’t you dare come backâno-one messes with my cherry tomatoes.
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there is NOTHING worse than knowing that you have vermin. and ESPECIALLY when they dare to eat your food. good luck with that - hope he and his/her furry friends don't come back.----- Better mice than rats!
by Clair @ 27/01/2004 8:02 am • Permalink •
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When we lived in a converted barn in Yorkshire, the field mice would always invade in winter.
They ate the bristles off of the pastry brush and in one Fawlty Towers-esque moment, one even popped out of the box of dog biscuits when Mrs.D. picked it up. I don't know which one was more 'surprised'!!
by Mr.D. @ 27/01/2004 12:01 pm • Permalink •
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I too have difficulty in killing most pests, flys,ticks & mosquitos excepted. In 1979 I retrieved my bus from the Indian border where I had been forced to leave it for four months and discovered that it was infested with small mice. I reasoned that they would be only a short term annoyance as they would surely abandon ship once our noisy and vibrating vehicle started rolling. The prescence of a few mice was no great problem, I felt, and quashed the general demand by my passengers & wife for immediate mouse extermination. However in Kabul I was forced to admit that the little creatures were extremely tenacious and fertile. The inside of our bus resembled a mini set for "The Pied Piper". Unfortunately for us in Afghanistan no rodent under the size of a small cat is deemed to be worthy of notice and all traps were extremely over dimensioned. We were forced to resort to poison, origin, kind and enviromental effect unknown. Why my children don`t have 2 heads is beyond me. The poison did seem to work, but in my heart, and I know I am wrong for so many reasons, I still envision a tribe of mutated India mice who are now living in sweden.
by john @ 27/01/2004 12:02 pm • Permalink •
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girlwonder: What with the mice and the ants, it feels like a bit of a menagerie here.
Clair: No kidding
Though I'm fond of rats as pets. Except the school rat that I looked after in the holidays which ate my curtains.
Mr. D.: I love that scene - a Fawlty Towers classic. I think the one I caught was probably a field mouse (what I saw of it as it streaked off).
john: Great story! It reminds me of a sketch in the comedy show "Goodness Gracious Me" where a woman gets a Buddhist pest controller in to get rid of her mice, and he tells her he will create a repressive regime under the fridge rather than using poison, and try to persuade them that infestation is bad for their karma.
by bsag @ 27/01/2004 7:02 pm • Permalink •
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if you find their hole, pack it with steel wool before spackling over it; that helps...
now that i'm a conscientious vegetarian, i may reconsider my mouse policy-- i settle for killing them as humanely as i can; i drop them into a glass jar and seal it, then put the whole jar in the garbage...
poison, of course, gives fleas incentive to find new hosts, and dead mice can rot in awful places...
by stacy @ 27/01/2004 11:01 pm • Permalink •
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okay folks ... okay
mmm ... bsag ... another post pulease!
by Julie @ 28/01/2004 10:01 am • Permalink •
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