And all through the house…
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. Merry Night-Before-Christmas and Merry Christmas!]
…a creature was stirring.
Last night was Christmas Eve. I was expecting a visit from my son, who was flying in as a rare treat. I had tidied up, and was putting on the finishing touches while waiting for him to arrive from the airport. As I was poised at the top of the staircase on my way down from the second floor, I saw a movement on one of the lower steps.
A dark shape. A small dark shape—very still, and then in motion again. With tiny little ears, and a long tail.
A mouse. Very much stirring.
I let out a shriek, like in the cartoons. Yes, I know that mice do not hurt people. But yes, they give me the willies when they startle me and scurry around—like—mice. The few times when this has happened before, they’ve always sought the little opening from whence they’d come and scurried away, hardly ever to be seen again.
But this mouse seemed to be lost and disoriented. Maybe because it was almost midnight on Christmas Eve, and no creature was supposed to be stirring. In the midst of my unreasonable fear was a sort of amusement. What was it doing here, this evening of all evenings?
The mouse was still on the staircase landing, and although I assumed that somehow it had managed to climb the three stairs to where it was, it appeared to be perplexed about how to get up or down from there. I watched it from what I considered a safe distance at the top of the stairs, and I could see it moving back and forth, back and forth, first towards the wall and then towards the edge of the step, but it could not seem to get the courage to make a break for it.
What did I do? I called my son and asked how far away he was. Forty-five minutes. And then I settled in, not for a long winter’s nap but for a long viewing from a good vantage point to monitor the mouse’s position till he arrived. For the moment, the mouse seemed quite well-contained on the stairs, but I didn’t trust that—and sure enough, slowly but surely, with many fits and starts, it managed to get back down those three stairs to the ground floor.
Now, it turns out that watching a mouse is actually sort of interesting. This one darted from stair-bottom to hall to bathroom to bedroom and back again (my place is built upside-down, with the bedroom and bathroom downstairs and living room and kitchen upstairs). I had a special horror of the mouse being in the bedroom—so after its one foray into the bedroom for five minutes and then out again, I slammed the bedroom door shut and placed a thick towel to block the crack at the bottom. The towel seemed to act as an effective barrier, like a small mountain range, and the mouse didn’t venture into that room again.
But back and forth it went—along the wall in the hall, into the bathroom, up a few stairs and then back down them again. I noticed that it seemed to get smarter and smarter; each time it climbed the stairs it was better at it, until it seemed as though it had been doing this all its little life.
And then by trial and error it found the molding along the side of the stairs, which then acted as a sort of ramp by which the mouse could easily climb all the way to the top. This filled me with dread. I was conceding the downstairs for now, but the upstairs was my territory! But what to do? That molding-ramp made it so easy; the mouse was coming up in a determined sort of way, till I could look into its beady little eyes and it could look into mine. I let out another involuntary yelp, stamping my feet and clapping my hands, trying to make enough noise to frighten it off.
I looked and sounded completely and utterly ridiculous.
And yet it was effective; the little thing stopped in its tracks, then turned and went back downstairs again, to my great relief. Then a few minutes later it came up the ramp-molding again, and I re-enacted the same stupid pantomime I had before. The mouse kept coming—up up up, light and fleet of foot, relentless and implacable. I actually thought of throwing something at it to head it off—perhaps my shoe, like Clara in “The Nutcracker.” But oh, for a platoon of tin soldiers like hers! (I’ve cued up this video to start at the right spot, although it’s mistitled because these are not meant to be rats, they’re mice):
But alas, we were alone, just the two of us, mousie and me. And I didn’t really want to hurt it, which I thought might happen if I threw my shoe, so I reached for a pillow—and at that moment I heard the key turn in the lock and my son walked in.
I’m always happy to see him, but perhaps never so happy as this time, as I stood at the top of the stairs in a semi-crouch, clutching a small pillow and making silly-yet-hopefully-scary noises at a mouse that was climbing a molding-ramp on the edge of the staircase.
My son managed to keep his disdain under control long enough to catch the mouse in a plastic container and escort it outside to be released, but not before we took a photo though the plastic. Yes, the mouse is cute. But no, I don’t want him in my house, not on Christmas Eve or any other time.
I’ve never encountered a live mouse in my house– on Christmas Eve or any other time– but I have two cats, and I expect any self-respecting mouse would “get the hell out of Dodge” if it did wander in from the city streets.
I had a mouse in my house a few months ago and I trapped it with one of those plastic, non-lethal traps and let it loose outside. A couple of days later I saw another mouse that looked very similar, but then a lot of mice look alike so I just assumed it was a different mouse and we might have a bigger problem on our hands. I trapped this mouse using the same trap (although he did manage do get the piece of cheese out of the trap without setting it off once) and once again put him outside — further away this time.
A few days later he returned. At this point I was pretty sure it was the same mouse. I set the trap again and actually caught him trying very carefully to remove the cheese. The trap closed before he got the cheese and he stood next to the trap, staring at it and then he stared at me before scurrying off. I finally caught him again and we drove him a couple miles away before releasing him. He hasn’t returned.
I don’t really mind mice. If I could train one to use a mini litter box, I wouldn’t really care if he ran around the house.
Rats, however, are a different story.
Living in country, or at least a reasonable distance between houses field mice are a battle beginning of winter as they look for a warm cozy living space. Generations of them in the last almost 3 decades you think are the same mouse, kinda cute my wife thinks of their dead carcass.
I was sitting reading in my family room one night when I spied a mouse making its way along the base of the book case opposite me. I watched it until it looked over and saw me watching it. It jumped high in the air, higher than I thought it could, and took off. It was around that time that I took the lid off the steel can that held dry dog food and saw a half dozen little mice inside. I have no idea how they got in there. Anyway, my daughter and I carefully lifted them out and took them about a block away and set them free. The mother may have been the one that saw me watching it.
Same here, but they shit and piss everywhere. I had a bunch nesting under the stove, and it was fun to see bits of insulation slowly moving across the floor. But eventually I couldn’t deal with the mess anymore and trapped them all, about 14 IIRC. Live traps don’t work as well as the snap traps, and modern snap traps don’t work as well as the old fashioned ones. Such is progress.
Same here, but they shit and piss everywhere. I had a bunch nesting under the stove, and it was fun to see bits of insulation slowly moving across the floor for nest building. But eventually I couldn’t deal with the mess anymore and trapped them all, about 14 IIRC. Live traps don’t work as well as the snap traps, and modern snap traps don’t work as well as the old fashioned ones. Such is progress.
Never had a mouse inside the house, but I did find one of their flying cousins hanging from the bookshelf in my bedroom. Carefully caught it and let it go outside. I doubt he was from Wuhan.
I have been up on the tractor pulling a bush hog and you can see mice or small rats running in the tall grass in front of the tractor.
I am with Chuck. We have a lake house – an old one, the core of the structure is > 100 years old – an hour away and every few winters it get overrun by mice. Finding their droppings all over the place is disappointing because of the work involved in washing every utensil in every drawer the mice have decorated . . . . so out come the strategically placed traps and the peanut butter. Some winters we have no mice visit us, and some winters I’ve sent a half dozen or more to that great wheel of cheese in the sky.
Now your mouse-in-the-house story Neo – that was funny. It made me chuckle.
That is a deer mouse, a nasty disease vector. I live in the country, so every fall and winter I run a trap line. I reccomend Tomcat brand traps, they are very effective at mouse elimination.
Epic adventure tale, well told.
Darling story, well told.
Mice are not as bad as some other pests but they do intrude and leave droppings everywhere! We had so many in our old basement with French drain, crawl space, cylinder block old walls. This was on the East Coast. Our neighbors told us to just co-exist with them but we couldn’t stand it. We didn’t want to put out poison so we finally hired a company that sent dedicated men who went over the entire basement and applied a rigid metal netting over every crack and crevice. One of these gentlemen cut his hand badly and we drove him to the emergency room. He was such a good sport about it and insisted on going back to work. It took them several days but after that we never saw another mouse.
My neighbors here in California tell me there are gophers around and the occasional snake in the garage. So far no sightings.
In New Mexico they (small rodents of usual size) are the vector for Hanta virus, but that virus is geographically limited IIRC.
Not very humane, but very effective: glue boards. If a mouse gets two legs on it, s/he is a goner. They may have a leg or two off and they can drag the thing a ways, but they can’t get through the small spaces they use, and they can’t eat or drink. Like I said, not humane, but, as cute as they are, they’re one hell of a disease vector as they crap and pee over everything.
Had one momma get up into the cars ventilation system, build a nest on top of the cabin air filter and drop a litter. Stunk like hell, because besides the usual mouse waste product, one of the babies died, so i had the additional odor of a tiny rotting corpse. It took 2 15 minute sessions with ozone generator to make the inside of the car bearable.
It’s nothing personal, but I won’t have the little buggers living with me.
Gotta say this thread has developed nicely. But I think needs further work — see below.
Haven’t seen many mice in HK. I think the rats eat them. Or maybe the cockroaches do that.
https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2016/12/worlds-most-disgusting-alcoholic-drinks/
There’s a mouse angle!
I’m startled how many of you release a mouse outside, as if you were Hindus afraid of killing even bugs. Where do you think the mouse came from? From outside, and you will see it again.
But you don’t mind killing fish, chickens, cows, and pigs for their flesh, do you? We eat our oysters alive and raw, as you up north eat your cherrystone clams.
I had rats in my attic once. They climbed a tree next to the house, ran along an overhanging branch, jumped onto the roof, went 30 feet to a vulnerable roof junction and dug their way in there. Took a rodent detective to figure that out and find the hidden entry hole. But it’s very disconcerting to hear them running over one’s ceiling in the evening!
I’ve had a rare mouse in my garage. Came from outside. Chewed a hole in my extra bag of dry dog food. Dead in classic mousetrap next day, no suffering like on a glue board.
Hanta virus, contained in mouse feces, is 100% fatal. Fortunately it is rare, occurs mostly in New Mexico.
Cicero:
This incident happened many years ago, and I never saw another mouse, and I live in the exact same place.
I had someone come and find the ways in which the mouse could have entered, and plug them up. No more mice.
When I have lived in other places – most notably an apartment in the Boston area in the 1970s – we killed enough mice to constitute a regiment. They kept coming back – not the same ones obviously, but others.