Posted by:
here, kitty, kitty
(
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Date: January 22, 2018 10:22PM
Another issue with mice to consider - for whatever reason, the liitle buggers like to chew on electrical wires.
I'm going to share my mouse story, to show what a soft, stupid heart I have.
I moved out to the country, next to a fellow who kept a lot of farm animals. Nearly everyone around me had horses and or cows. Lots of mice - I grew up rural, but had been a city girl for a lot of years.
So I start hearing the patter of little feet at night, see some mouse poop in the pantry, find the box of nibbled cereal. Clean up, secure the pantry using glass containers, no food sources. Whew. That wasn't too bad, right?
Uh, poop in the utensil drawer. Yuck. Okay, so I left them hungry, and they went exploring. I don't really mind feeding the little buggers, mice are cute little things anyway, but I know they carry disease. I can't kill them. I can't. Apparently, my two little poodles are useless in seeing to their duties. What am I going to do?
I'll trap and release. That's it. Maybe it will scare them, and they'll stay away. So I get a no-kill trap, set it on a shelf in the pantry, and when I check it in a day or so, there's a dead mouse inside, and five live mice in the formerly empty five gallon bucket that just happened to be in front of the shelf. ...? Okay, the bucket's a better trap than the real trap. I put the bucket in the car, and drive the mice to a nice big field about a mile away. They're field mice, right?
Home I go with my bucket, thinking, that ought to do it. I take care of the trap, triple bag it and ask forgiveness of the poor little thing, put it in the bin outside. I think I'll leave the bucket where it worked so well before, and go about my business. I look in the bucket in a day or so, and there's a still, small body in it. I murdered another one! Maybe I can save it...
So I pick it up, take it to the bathroom, and with the medical expertise of knowing that water thaws a pound of meat pretty damn fast, I run the tap to the perfect baby milk on the wrist temperature, and careful not to soak its tiny face, I gently stroke it as water flows over its body. It starts to move a little in a minute or so, and I'm so relieved. About fifteen seconds after that, it suddenly comes fully alert, is clearly terrorized, leaps out of hands onto my arm, runs up my shoulder and takes a flying leap. I was expecting a hug.
Now, the dogs yapping and throwing fits, want to hunt it down. I want it to escape. We're all under the bed, going for the gold. We give up after five or ten minutes, the mouse claiming the prize. We never see it again. I turn the bucket upside down, never to capture another mouse. i think they might use it to springboard down from the pantry shelf.
I go buy some cat food and wood chips, put them and a little dish of water in an unused aquarium on a dresser in my bedroom. In under a week, I had at least a dozen mice I don't know how to get out of the new mouse Ritz, and they smell. Ungrateful. That's all I have to say. They're impossible to catch with a fish net, and I don't want rabies or anything. So I load the whole aquarium into the car, and off to the field we go.
I put a little dish of cat food on the porch rail. The aquarium goes next to the bucket. I secure my utentils, leave my dishes in the dishwasher until I use them, at which time I hand wash them and return them to the now useless dishwasher. The mice had defeated me.
That was nothing, though. Sometime I'll tell you about the evening I came home to find four of the most beautiful, huge, dark brown quarter horses you ever laid eyes on , just loose in my front yard. That was a real treat.
Anyway, when I moved out, the mice had done a number on my stove's electrical wire. It had to be replaced.