First Published: February 17, 2004
I’ve never been a huge Mickey Mouse fan, seeing him as more of a corporate logo rather than a cartoon character per se. That and the fact that my humour tends more towards the darker, more cynical style of Warner Bros. In fact Wile E. Coyote’s life so parallels mine, I’ve often wondered if we weren’t separated at birth.
The reason I’ve been thinking about mice though is the recent discovery that we’re sharing our house with a herd of them. If you remember, a couple of posts ago I was recounting the multitude of creatures, which had chosen to join us in our home. Wasps, squirrels, flying beasties and other assorted wildlife moved in around the same time as we did. They were summarily dealt with and, at least as far as we were aware, there were no other squatters on the premises.
However, the other night while watching TV, we heard what could only be described as a scratching sound coming from behind the fire. A full-scale investigation whilst lying on my stomach with a flashlight revealed absolutely nothing. The scratching continued unfortunately, which led me to believe that once again, we were not alone. My initial conclusion that after several weeks of sub-zero temperatures, the squirrels had decided, quite sensibly, to move back indoors.
We have a half cellar beneath our house, home to the well pump, a few soggy pieces of insulation and many spiders. I haven’t been down there in over a year and quite frankly, am in no rush to change that. The entrance is currently buried in snow and accessing it would require more effort than I’m interested in attempting right now. Cold weather notwithstanding, I’m in no particular rush to come face to face with something unidentified in the dark. So, job number 352 on an ever-increasing list of unpleasant jobs to do around the house got neatly filed away in the “If I don’t think about it, it will go away file.”
That is, until The Light of my Life™ was rummaging around in the cabinet under the sink and discovered unmistakable evidence that we had mice. Mice droppings are fairly recognizable but curiously, we could see no means of them getting in and out. Now it’s an old house, with numerous nooks and crannies, located on an acre of pine forest so it’s no real surprise that rodents have found their way in. If anything, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen them before. That said, animal lovers though we are, we don’t want mice living under our bathroom sink. In case I was in any doubt about this fact, The Light of my Life™ reminded me in a very loud, unnaturally high-pitched voice.
The following night, we were discussing our plans to resolve the matter and during the conversation I opened the cabinet and began sorting through the odds and ends we had stored there. I’d barely got started when I was treated once more to the ear-splitting sound of The Light of my Life™ in the early stages of a hysteria attack. It was some moments before she could form sentence coherent enough to communicate what I had missed. In a plastic bowl, which had been living under the sink for some time, sat a small, rather cute, and very much alive, mouse. He wasn’t wearing red shorts, or suspenders but a mouse he quite definitely was. And The Light of my Life™ wasn’t willing to have him in our bathroom cabinet or anywhere else close by. That much was clear.
It was the work of a few minutes to carry the bowl outside and set him free near our neighbours’ horse barn. However, the decision had been made and the mice had to go. The next challenge was to determine how this should be done. Now, as I said, we’re animal lovers and would never deliberately harm one. As much as possible, we shop responsibly, ensuring no animals are harmed in the manufacturing of the products we buy. While my stint as a vegetarian only lasted a few years, I still feel somewhat guilty about reverting to meat-eating and in this area too, we try to be responsible in our purchases. And we donate more money than we can really afford to animal charities. So, it was important to both of us that this was handled as humanely as possible.
The Light of my Life™ went shopping and came home with something called a “Glue Board”. It’s essentially a piece of sticky cardboard, which you place near the skirting board, or somewhere the mice are known to travel. The idea is, said mice will then stick to the glue board until such time when the homeowner removes them to a different location and releases them unharmed, to begin a new life in someone else’s house. Sounds fine and the system worked great right up to the point where I read the instructions.
I’m not going to describe the process here other than to explain that it involves heavy-duty industrial rubber gloves, a 5-gallon bucket, vegetable or mineral oil and “a blunt object”. Not only is the process decidedly icky, there’s also the thorny problem that any animals caught overnight would have to wait until I returned from work, many hours later before they’d have any hope of release. Even though this method may not kill them, it’s hardly humane.
So, animal lovers or not, we agreed this should be handled the traditional way, with a good old-fashioned mousetrap. The expression “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”, is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, although we’re now told he never said it. Misquote or no, there may still be some truth in the saying. Once I’d figured out exactly how the mechanism worked, painfully smacking my thumb knuckles several times in the process, I had it baited with cheese and in place for the night’s hunting. So far, it’s been out for 3 nights and we’re running at a success rate of 100%. Which only leads to the question – just how many of the bloody things are in there? We’ll keep using the trap until I start finding it empty for a few days in a row.
One thing’s for certain. The first time I hear any songs from the Mickey Mouse Club coming from under the bathroom sink, I’m calling in the professionals.
The Gunsmoke Diaries 