House Mouse

Kate is in bed, and it's only 6:30pm.  She gave me a day off today, had 8 false crawls and 2 nests to relocate, and now she's pooped.  I was told before she crashed out, that it was my turn to blog.  However, with me taking the day off, there isn't much to report.  I tried to sleep in, but couldn't, my body being used to rising early now.  I spent 2 hours making a lasagna that we had for dinner and will feed us a few more times.  I painted some posts white (the ones we use to mark the turtle nests).  I tooled around the house and the shed for awhile.  That's about it.

I did however manage to upload some videos today, including this one showing me finding eggs for the first time!



You can see more in the side bar to the right, or on my YouTube channel.  Our somewhat spotty internet service makes uploading longer videos difficult.  Hopefully I'll have better success with it soon.

Since there isn't anything else to write about, I'll use the opportunity to tell you about the mouse situation, something we haven't mentioned in the blog yet:

We have mice in the house.  We hear them scurry around at night, see their little mouse droppings in the areas they frequent, and to date, have caught and removed five of the furry little creatures.  Kate bought a small humane mouse trap after finding two mouse beds during our initial house cleaning.  We bait it with peanut butter, and set it out at night.  So far, the best place to catch them is under the bathroom sink.  There was a mouse bed there, and we thought there was a hole in the wall.  Now we know there is no way in or out of that cabinet save through the front door.  I remember one night, both of us were lying in bed, and I heard cabinet doors opening and closing.  I wondered what it could be, and went to investigate.  I found nothing in the kitchen, then went to check the bathroom.  When I opened the door, there he was, the common house mouse, staring back at me.  I tried to catch him with a cup, but he escaped.  On a different morning, I saw one run across the living room floor, across the dining room, and into the closet that holds our broken laundry machines.  I put the trap there that night, and caught one.

When we catch the mice, we take the trap with us on our morning drive and release them near the salt marsh along the way.  Although the first mouse we released near the auto shop, and the latest mouse, which we caught last night, I released in the backyard.  Kate says he'll just be back, and next time to take him further.  We'll never know if we recapture him.

We've given them all names so far.  In order they were: Pauline, Frederick, Simon, Dominick and Spencer.  Pauline was by far the largest, barely able to enter the trap.  Frederick had peed all over himself while he was trapped, he's the one in the picture above.

I don't know if we'll be able to catch enough of them to rid the house completely.  We only have the one trap and they have a rather high rate of reproduction.  We don't really mind them too much, as long as they aren't in the kitchen, though they can be rather destructive, and carry disease, so we may need to get more traps before they get out of hand.  We also have some other infestation going on in the attic.  Every once and awhile, there will be loud scurrying sounds in the ceiling.  They sound too large to be mice.  We're hoping it's only squirrels and not big rats, or monsters.