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.

A sad discovery under my deck

Now that I've posted a happy outcome for animals living under my deck, I now have to post a sad outcome.

A couple of weeks ago, I lifted up the most difficult boards of my deck, which I'd previously been unable to unscrew because of limited time and patience. I was having a party, and I wanted to get the deck and garden in spiffy shape. It was time. In the weeks prior to that, I reported on something having died under the deck. And yes, it had. Here is the initial view:

Upon closer inspection, it revealed that the handsome boy rat I'd seen in my garden earlier this spring - and he was handsome! - had made his home under the boards. To the left you can see the collection of paper and plastic scraps he had collected to line his nest. I find this a charming habit. When I had previously lifted the boards above where the skunk has always lived, there is no such collection of "blankets." Only rats, and perhaps squirrels, do this, as far as I know - birds make nests only when they're fixing to have young.

But in the upper corner, you can see he is not lying in state on his bed. No. And I was sad to see the decomposing body, which I buried with a little prayer. (I am, however, grateful that creatures choose my property as the place to be comfortable and die at.)

Instead, you see that he went to the other corner of his cabin under the deck for his final agonies. And agonies they were, because the turquoise staining you see at the tail end of his skeleton is not mouldy fur, as one might assume. It is the stain of a block of poison. And the little fellow ate a lot of it.

I only made the connection about the poison when my resident squirrels, unwittingly helpful creatures they are, positioned a block of the stuff on top of the fence that they run along to get to my patio balcony. I wondered where that thing that looks like a rock came from until I picked it up with my hands: it was poison. And I'm glad the squirrels only played with or consumed just a little of it, and left it out in the open from wherever they found it. I've put it in a container inside, I don't know what for. Evidence, perhaps. As if I need evidence that someone has decided to "solve" a problem because that is what it has been presented as.

A single rat in the backyard is not a problem. There is lots in nature to take care of "problems." I used exclusion to keep the rat out of my lettuce garden and my composter, where I feared losing my harvest and of encouraging the rodents to procreate. I'm the only one really doing this - composting, gardening, excluding. Maybe more people should compost, garden, and use chicken wire, than assume that the presence of a rat is a problem due to my nefarious habits, and worth causing the suffering that poison causes.

A short story to read: The Rat

My friend Patrick Edwards-Daugherty wrote a book of short stories called "Pet Poems." The cover of it depicts the skeleton of a squirrel. I showed him the skeletal remains of one of my pet rats, and he gave me a copy. Here is one of his short stories, entitled "The Rat." About a slacker guy and his new pet, it has a dry sense of humour about a conflict that makes you root (of course!) for the rat. It takes about 10 - 15 minutes to read, all online at the venerable Ampersand Review. Enjoy!