The aged mother of a friend, when told by her daughter that she believed there was a mouse in her house, said: "You don't have A mouse; you have MICE".
First, some facts:
1. One mouse can eat eight pounds of food in a year. That's YOUR food: rice, frosted flakes, Swiss chocolate, Lays potato chips. Or your dog's food -- mice don't discriminate.
2. A female mouse ovulates every other day.
3. One mouse, on average, can deposit 36,000 droppings a year. I'm not going to work out how big a pile that is, based on the average size per dropping of 2 mm, but you can imagine.
4. Baby mice can mate at five weeks of age. Litters vary from four to twelve.
5. The average house mouse lives for one year, eating, pooping, and breeding the whole time.
Yuk!!!!!
However, they are cute:
So cu
te that people actually have them as pets!
I'm no stranger to mice in my house. In our Calgary home, which was next to a golf couse that was next to the river, the mice got so bad one year that sometimes the mouse traps sounded like castenets. I finally had to call in the exterminators, who wandered round, inside and out, and basically told us that we couldn't stop them coming in; we had to declare war. (I thought that by setting killer mouse traps, we were pretty warlike, but obviously it wasn't discourging our rodents, so we had to move on to something more serious.)
It turned out to be an arsenal of small, triangular boxes, which the exterminators filled with poison-laced grain, and placed strategically round the basement, and in the few places on the main level they pronounced 'mousey'.
It took a few weeks, but the problem was solved. I didn't want to think about the poor little corpses lying around -- maybe in our walls. I actually saw a tiny desiccated body in one of our window wells.
It was after this slaughter that Ian, my soft-hearted husband, bought the "live trap", also known as "the mouse B&B".
It seemed to work pretty well at first. Ian would gently carry the trap and it's occupant outside, open the lid, and out the mouse would scamper, warm and well fed, and usually only a few feet from the house. I pointed out to Ian that the same mouse might just turn right around and come back in again for some more of that great cheese, but he ignored me.
Then we moved to Ontario. And when the mouse trap was removed from whatever 'house and garden' box it had been packed in, it contained two dead, somewhat mummified mice.
"Oh God!", I said "The poor little things died of thirst". Ian looked very sad but said nothing. Bad things happen when you get too busy to check the live trap.
The people we bought our Ontario house from had a cat (see http://lifewithzephyr.blogspot.com/2009/08/) and for the first year, we didn't see any signs of mice. But last autumn, realizing that the coast was clear, they began to make their first, tentative forays into the house.
Out came the live trap -- this time with a small water dish included. I rolled my eyes. But again, it seemed to work pretty reliably, and as the winter wore on, fewer and fewer 'guests' took advantage of the hospitality.
Fast forward to August 2010. I see signs of the little buggers on our fireplace hearth. What would they be doing there? There's no food. Perhaps they're bringing their own. Perhaps they're sitting around the pilot light, roasting tiny marshmallows and telling stories. It's risky. It would be instant immolation if I turned on the gas fire.
The B&B is coming up mysteriously empty some mornings: no mouse, but no food either. Hmmmm. "Perhaps a large bug is eating the cheese" Ian offered hopefully.
A couple of weeks later, I was sitting in the TV room, calmly watching 'House' or some such thing, when I glimpsed movement out of the corner of my eye. I waited, 'House' forgotten. A small mouse danced happily along the wall between the door to the deck and the TV. I watched as it climbed into Zephyr's toy basket (Zephyr was snoring comfortably on the sofa while this was going on).
Feeling a bit like the giant in Jack the Giant Killer, I picked up the toy basket and methodically removed the toys, one by one, until there were only a couple of toys and very frightened mouse in the bottom. I opened the back door and dumped the contents, catching sight of a tiny black shape streaking across the deck and onto the patio. "And don't come back!" I muttered futilely.
I settled back to continue my TV watching, and a second mouse made a dash for the relative safety of the tangle of cords behind the TV. God Damn!!! Luckily, the second mouse also climbed into the toy basket (following the trail of his mate I suppose), so I was able to repeat my 'giant' routine.
The next night, it happened again.
So that's when I became the "Angel of Death".
Off to Home Hardware. Home with something that the fellow standing by an impressive array of rodent-killing paraphernalia swore to me was "really good stuff". Hardening my heart, I loaded the trap. Next morning, I walked my captive down to the woods, far from the house, noting that it had eaten some of the deadly feast, and trying not to stare back into its innocent, questioning, rodenty eyes.
It got easier. Now I let them go, wishing them well for whatever life they have left.
Since I started my quest for a mouse-free house, I've caught at least 10 of them. I've also placed hunks of the poison in various dog-inaccessible places and been astounded to see it disappear.
I think they're carting if off in small wheelbarrows.
