So as H has already said, I was up ‘til 1:45 Monday morning watching the cat and mouse rodeo. Simon had the bugger in his mouth and then as all the stories say, he decided to drop it and play with it rather than kill it which, being a pacifist, I applauded, until I realized that I really didn’t want it in the house, and that he was the best equipped to dispatch it… but HOW? I couldn’t let him out in the ‘oh! so dark night’… he’d just run off and become a plaything for a coyote or a fox. I can just see Simon in the coyote’s mouth, tail and head drooping, just as the mouse drooped out either side of Simon’s mouth. (Do you remember the old song about the old lady who swallowed a fly? And then a bird to catch the fly? And then a cat to catch the bird?) Well, anyway, I was in a quandary.
So the mouse ran under various pieces of furniture, Simon vaulted over Ed a few times while in hot pursuit. The mouse went nose-to-nose with Ed at least once (really! Nose-to-nose!) and ran into his hip as Herb has said. Ed turned out to have quite a bit of pointer in him, and was quite effective at staring at the spot where the mouse was contemplating existence. But frankly, I was better at identifying exactly where the mouse was hiding, lifting a piece of wood from the winter’s stock beside the wood stove, moving the wood box or my grandmother’s 4 foot high Atwater-Kent radio, and playing a kind of macabre ‘catch-and-release.’ At one point, Ed lay on the floor pointing at a tiny black mouse for at least 20 minutes… and they were only about 18 inches apart. So having moved all the furniture “out of the way” by layering chairs on top of the sleigh bed, and tables on top of chairs, I had expertly accomplished nothing except to make the room a mess.
Then everyone got pretty bored with the game. Simon went to sleep on the sleigh bed with his head across a table leg, Ed rolled over on his side for a snooze, and I put out “have-a-heart” traps baited with peanut butter and crashed in the too warm bedroom rather than sleep in the air conditioned living room that had been the fulcrum of the activity.
Last night, I got familiar myself with a mouse (this one, brown) on top of the fridge. It was chewing on the bag of rice I had put up there temporarily while I was planning dinner, about 15 minutes after I had stowed it there in contemplation of getting it into one of its storage boxes.
So here’s my question… if a mouse shows NO fear of cats or people and it hangs out eating raw brown rice, what is one to do? I am not fast enough to catch it, and the cats have become quite complacent about it. I have taken the winter wood box out of the house as the mouse was running behind it. (Actually “the” mouse is at least two since the brown mouse is definitely different than the black mouse that was communing with Ed (‘What’s your sign, man?’ or ‘What do you think of that Murdoch story’? )
Herb has suggested a paint gun so I will know how many there are - “oh yes, it is the yellow one,” “or the green one” or … Oddly, I don’t find that suggestion particularly helpful except as interior decoration advice. (“Gee I wonder if I should color coordinate the mouse with the color scheme of the room where it hangs out?” Too much time in an Interior Design program?)
So, I have put out peanut butter baited traps. I have vacuumed and replaced the furniture. I have stowed the excess cat food cans and put the extra cat food in the fridge…So here’s the philosophical question…
Are you ready?
If there’s a mouse in the house (or mice) and it shows no fear…
If there are cats in the house and they treat the mouse like a video game…
If the mouse is on top of the fridge supervising my cooking while eating its ingredients…
What’s a wife to do?
I think I need my huh…huh…husband! Isn’t that what marriage is for?
But wait!… He’s thinking about paint guns rather than eradication. So the “real American” marriage begins.
Your advice would be most welcome.
In my vast experience, the outside world comes inside usually for food and occasionally for shelter. As a child I spent summers in upstate New York where we had a family of garter snakes that enjoyed the warmth of the small boiler under the house that was our source of hot water. One solution to enforcing the "ours" and "theirs" border is to reduce its porousness with strategically placed wire mesh (metal, not plastic) or steel wool stuffed in the spaces through which pipes pass. I suspect that's, in your house, an impossible task.
ReplyDeleteDenial of food requires keeping all edibles, such as the rice, in glass or metal containers. Plastic is often insufficient to deter sharp incisors. That practice can lead to a certain battlefield mindset, which can become uncomfortable and a source of friction between humans.
Perhaps one of your neighbors has a mouser available for short-term loan. Of course, that could lead to gifts of the dead prey, which would have to be appropriately acknowledged.
In dealing with the animal world of small, skittering creatures, I prefer mice to cockroaches, i.e. Middletown Springs to New York City. Let's not talk about rats!
So what exactly is appropriate acknowledgement for the dead prey of a mouser?
ReplyDelete__ a contribution in its name to Emily's List or the Democratic National Party?
__ a pair of chopsticks? (See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=977SVqIjcfg )
__ a video contract a la Rebecca Black's "Friday"? (For those who don;t have teenagers, here's the painful video: http://ryanseacrest.com/2011/03/14/watch-the-rebecca-black-viral-video-that-everyones-talking-about-video/)
Nora, husbands are quite useless when it comes to dealing with mice in the house. About 10 years ago, the evening before Julio was leaving for Nicaragua, a tiny grey mouse joined our farewell bowl of ice cream/snuggle on the TV room couch, running along the windowsills and hiding under the couch. Hound dogs Betty and Rob took one look at him--and promptly headed to bed. Julio and I spent the next hour chasing him around with no success, it was getting late and there was a flight to catch the next morning, so we went to bed, closing him into the room by shutting the french doors.
ReplyDeleteThe next day, after dropping Julio at the airport, I had a revelation on the drive home. A la Bill Murray in Caddyshack: if you want to catch a mouse, you have to think like a mouse. I figured he must be a hungry mouse, having been trapped in the room overnight with no access to food or water. I got a rectangular box, opened it at one end and placed some crushed cocktail peanuts deep at the far end. I sat cross legged on the couch in the TV room with the box on the floor in front of me. I lifted the apron of the couch to see Mr. Mouse sitting beneath me. I simply told him I was not leaving until he got into the box. In less than 5 minutes he obliged, I picked up the box o'mouse, and carried him out to the yard.
Apart from a few mouse pellets on the rug and the TV remote having tiny chew marks on the #5 button, (see, he really WAS hungry), and some lingering disappointment in our dogs, we escaped unscathed.