A mouse in the house

This one here is a young teenager.
There's another on the cuff of the wrist, too.

Today while I was lounging on the couch, doing my work (yes, indeed) I saw a little mouse in my peripheral vision, and turned my head to see that no, I wasn't hallucinating. Sheeee's back! Or he. I knew it, because I could hear the mouse in the wall between the kitchen and bathroom earlier today.

I dropped my hand down to the floor as she approached, and zoom, off she ran in the other direction. She looked exactly like this mouse in the picture, except smaller. These house mice are very tiny, indeed. The adults are the size of the domestic mouse juveniles that I've had the pleasure of keeping as pets.

I do not know how the mice get in, but I know it isn't very often I hear them and less often that I see them, or even evidence of them (a half-eaten cherry tomato or a hole in a bag of bread was the giveaway). Perhaps once a month, with two weeks in June or July being clearly youngster-training season. I've only seen two babies, one time; every other time just one mouse. Still, since May, I have managed to catch three of them - or the same one two times and another the third - and put them outside. That is going to be a lot harder to do, now that winter's almost here.

And so long as they're in the walls, what can be done? I cannot use a sound repeller, as I have two pet rats and a mouse. The pet rats are a mouse deterrent. Keeping my kitchen counter free of bread and other comestibles is helpful. I can also staple down some hardware cloth over the gaps and holes that kitchen cupboards have, where the plumbing and electrical pass through the walls. That will only keep them out of the public space. I'd rather keep the public space open. That way, if I can manage to trap any mice, I can keep them in captivity until spring returns. It's sad to keep a wild animal captive, but I don't want to have mice breeding in the walls if I can help it. I can, at least, give them a good captive environment.

I know this post will send some readers into a tizzy - mice being "vermin" and all - but I've never been one to panic about the boom and bust of population cycles of rodents. If a place isn't kept very hospitable, they will keep moving and not have the opportunity to settle and ruin things for the humans. Moreover I've been thoroughly exposed to most disease vectors, including humans, enough to a) not fear getting sick and b) know what to do if I were to get sick. Besides, Public Health cannot say more than that rodents' possible infectious diseases (leptospirosis, borreliosis, campylobacter, melioidosis, tularemia, plague, rat bite fever, ricketts, scrub typhus, ringworm, pneumonia, protozoans, flukes, roundworms, and cestodes, the list goes on so it's little wonder I've never been sick) are only possibilities and not guarantees. The possibility is, in my 8 years' experience, quite overplayed. Don't come eat at my house if you don't think I'm capable of keeping things clean. Don't eat…or garden, or swim, or do anything…anywhere, for that matter. Unless you are a sensible, well-educated person and realize that immunity is also dependent on exposure.