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And all through the house… — 16 Comments

  1. When my cat brings a mouse into the house, I get a broom and chase it toward the door. This usually works. I think Milly has gotten rid of the mice in our yard because I haven’t seen one in quite a while. We are now getting visits (outside only) from a racoon.

    Merry Christmas everyone.

  2. That face through the plastic looks so crafty! Almost as if it were plotting to take over the world!! (The mouse has a color scheme similar to that of the hamster I used to have.) Merry Christmas, New Neo.

  3. I was sitting reading one evening when I looked up and saw a mouse trotting along the base of a book case. He was oblivious of my presence, it seemed, but then he looked at me and saw that I was looking at him. He jumped straight up in the air and turn to go back the way he came. I had not moved; just looked at him.

    Eye to eye confrontation. I just let him go.

    No, it wasn’t Christmas Eve. We are waiting to go to my son’s where he has 40 people coming for dinner. Merry Christmas.

  4. I enjoyed this tale as much as the first time I read it. Grinning from ear to ear. You are a wonderful writer. Merry Christmas!

  5. We have some children’s books that involve mice, and some of the illustrations look just like you pictures.
    I wonder why there are so many books about cute little mice when most people can’t abide the real ones?
    Thanks for reposting the story.
    It’s like going to family Christmas and hearing all one’s favorite aunts and uncles tell the old familiar tales.
    We don’t do enough of that these days.

  6. It is especially difficult to get any New England house permanently mouse free.

    Wonderful story.

    Merry Christmas to you and all.

  7. It is difficult to get any house mouse free. We live in a semi rural area (use to be rural but too many housing developments going in) in a house we built 40 yrs ago. Have not seen a mouse in the house for a while now. One night two of our cats were getting very interested in something in our bedroom on the second floor. I turned on the light there it was – A Mouse! I managed to get a towel over it before the cats got to it. Took it outside and let it go. The cats gave me a very dirty look.

  8. You especially don’t want that mouse. That is a deer mouse, which are nothing but disease vectors.

  9. Merry Christmas Boss…I pray that it’s blessed with everything good.
    and that all your mice be sojourners, not immigrants. 😉

  10. Merry Christmas to all ….

    And my mouse story… I live in a semi-rural area (small city with lots of trees) in Oklahoma. My mom lived in Michigan and I would go for Christmas and a few weeks in snowy MI and then bring her back to OK for a few months. So, we are back in OK and we both were seeing something darting along the room edges. For a day or so, we both thought that we were crazy or had a bunch of eye floaters. And then we found the evidence – no, not the normal evidence of mice, but small piles of thistle seeds stashed between towels, under pillows or seat cushions, in between something on the top shelf of a closet, in a shoe and so on.

    I had a bag of thistle seed in the garage. Somehow, this team of field mice got into the garage, found the bag, got into the house and were being good mice in stashing their find all over the house. I soon discovered that in many areas, the visible side of a door frame looked well built, but the backside, there were gaps. A piece of quarter-round would have closed the space off. But, I had duct tape as a faster way of sealing off the possible entry points. It’s been a while, I probably need to check/replace the duct tape.

    And, I discovered that you really need to superglue the piece of cheese to the mouse trap. I don’t think I could have trapped a mouse in a plastic tub – your son was super fast!

    It took a few weeks before we were sure that the invasion had stopped. In the meantime, I did a deep cleaning of all closets and other possible hidey-holes. I think it was about six months before I had my last seed-shower surprise. To this day, I am still wary of spaces, expecting to see a small pile of thistle seed come down on me.

  11. Be thankful that only mice are involved. We tend to have giant rats in our wooded community. 20 years ago our rental house had roof rats that can jump a couple feet or more and jump through open windows.

    Recently, my wife has been helping a client who is an old man who is a recent widower (she feels sorry for him) and has a rat problem. At his direction, she put out spring mouse traps. I told her that that isn’t going to work. Then they put out spring rat traps, which worked. Then the rats came back; maybe the guy leaves his door open? The standard rats traps weren’t big enough, and my wife got the special order, super sized rat traps. Now, thankfully, it seems that his children have gotten involved, though they don’t live nearby.

  12. Cue the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
    Civilization was lost when the mouse bwcame the good guy, and the bad guy was the cat.

  13. Whether for live trapping or snap-traps, I have found that mice can’t resist a combination of bacon and peanut butter as bait. I was put on to this years ago by a fellow working in a hardware store who had done college work in a rat lab (I was buying mouse traps). He told me the more rancid the bacon, the more attractive it is (but who keeps rancid bacon?). Unless the mice are not hungry (i.e., they’ve found your bird’s birdseed) I usually catch them within about 8 hours.

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