An innocent foray into the pantry the other day resulted in me finding not a bar of chocolate I'd forgotten about, not an extra bottle of vintage blackberry gin.........but a very obvious, particularly fresh-looking MOUSE POO!! Oh joy! Another run-in with the local furries. I have no fear of rodents, so turned out the pantry, in full-on mouse detection mode. I don't know how you spent that morning, but I spent it collecting & counting mouse poo. Eight. Hmmm. That's ok, as it would indicate that this is just the advance party. Probably one brave individual having a quick skank through the air brick to see if we've any decent biscuits in.
Despite growing up in the country, I can't recall ever seeing a single solitary mouse indoors (apart from the two pet ones I illicitly had off a class mate which lived in the bottom of my wardrobe until Grandma grassed me up). It was received wisdom in our family that rats lived under Grandad's shed, but despite sitting outside, aged 4, waiting & watching for ages, I never saw any evidence of this, which was disappointing, when seeing an actual live rat seemed so much more exciting than spending time with a new baby sister.
My first experience of a domestic mouse invasion happened while I was living in a particularly dreadful shared student house. I say 'particularly dreadful', but should qualify that by saying that it was still ten times better than the previous student house, which had an indoor water feature.......as in when we turned on the 1-bar electric fires in our rooms, the walls ran with water. The fires had the luxury of 2 bars when we moved in, but after a week, we arrived home to find the landlord leaving with a bundle of bars in his hand which he was 'taking for spares'. Anyway, I digress. When we returned to House no 2 after the summer break, there had clearly been a mouse invasion. A clan of the things had set up home in the upstairs flat residents' fridge & had eaten a hole the size of a plate in part of the stairwell. There was no damage to the downstairs flat where I lived, but I could hear many sets of mouse feet scampering around in the cavity walls, so called the landlord out. He waited till the rent was due......why make a special journey? I explained about the mice in the wall cavities. His reply??
"Ah. That's not mice, duck. What you can hear in there is pigeons".
I adopt my special voice which I use for speaking to people who may cause me to lose my patience & try not to look at the 6 months of food spills he's wearing down the front of his jumper (the sort of garment which if he took it off, would jog to the bin on its own). I explained that it is NOT pigeons. It's mice. It's definitely mice because I can hear them scampering about & more worryingly, I can hear them CHEWING. But no, he's not having any of it. They are apparently the feral city centre pigeons, which is why I can hear gnawing. Is he saying that these pigeons are so hungry that they are flying out to the suburbs to feast on ancient plasterboard in people's cavity walls?? Yes, he WAS saying that. Action taken = none.
Next mouse experience was over a decade later when a field was cleared at the back of our house for building. All the critters scattered far & wide......most of the rodenty ones opting for our garden. Big mistake, our cat at the time, Willow, was an excellent hunter & must have been sitting on the other side of the hedge with his mouth open. One mouse made it into our kitchen, where he confused us by running between ours & our neighbours house. I bought a humane mousetrap & stuffed it with a decent cheddar. 2 days later.....nothing. Neighbour bought one & caught the mouse within 1 hour with a lump of Mars bar. Lessoned learned. Don't bother wasting cheese, it's junk food all the way for mice here.
When Willow was old & poorly, we had our Very Big Invasion. A neighbour had re-sited his shed & the mice who were living underneath it were looking for new premises in what was a cold autumn. The found their way through an airbrick & under the floor boards of our house & ran between ours & our neighbours. Mars bars were bought & traps set. Within a week, we'd caught 7. They were so blatant, that the final one was caught almost in our hands from his little hideout behind my cookery book shelf on the dresser. One afternoon, I had no sooner taken one for a long walk to freedom & reset the trap, than another one succumbed to chocolate temptation & off I went again. I walked most of them a good way off down to a farmer's field & let them go. Then I read that mice need to be freed at least a mile away to make quite sure that they won't return, so I took them further, down to the far end of the village (where the Tories live). Eventually, we had to call out Pest Control. He wasn't bothered about my theories on where they might be getting in. He asked straight away if we'd got any stripped wooden floors. 'Yes', I said, & learned how this is a really easy way for them to get from underneath a house (where they're quite common) up into our living space. He was impressed that we'd caught 7, but said that this indicated a Big Infestation. Cold weather & destruction of where they are living is a key reason why mice will pack their little knotted hankies & try to move in.
So, I scrubbed out the pantry, & have been checking daily for further signs. So far, so good.
Now you may be wondering what the Chief Rat Catcher was doing while all this activity was going on. Well, he was putting his skills to use in the time-honoured way.....
...because here, you can actually SEE the keen level of interest he showed when I went to explain about the mouse.
This was him wanting to get involved while I was busy taking everything out of the pantry to check the extent of infiltration. And this was him pledging to earn his keep by setting up regular patrols......
Yes, his utter indifference has been quite staggering to behold. I can't say this has entirely surprised me. Albert Whiskers is completely random. A visiting mouse could be totally ignored, or he could meet with the nuclear option. Who knows?
One thing that did surprise me is that Mousey had broken into & eaten just one thing. Boxes of cereal, crackers, pasta, crisps, root vegetables.........all those items were sitting in the pantry waiting. But what did it choose?
This, dear readers, is a jar of my home-made apple, cider & chilli jelly, previously unopened. Mousey had chewed off the cellophane lid, removed the wax paper disc & as you can see, eaten at least a centimetre of the jelly. Jellies are liquid when they're bottled, so the surface is smooth. I also fill jars up to the top as this is good practice with home made preserves, to keep out the air. I couldn't believe how much of it had been eaten! Mousey is clearly a bit of a chilli-head as this is quite a hot jelly............maybe he doesn't have the same range of taste-buds as humans & couldn't taste it? In that case, all I can say is that I bet he felt it on its way out!
So there we are. Pantry being checked daily, but thankfully no sign. Have got a couple of bait boxes in dark corners just in case, but I don't really like using those. Humane traps are my favoured option. You have to remember to check them very regularly so that a creature isn't left shut up for a long time, but it somehow doesn't seem so bad to trap them if they get a chocolatey feast followed by a little ride in the car!
Wishing everyone a good weekend,
Until next time,
C x
