Genocide

Yes, I must confess to committing genocide.  Now, I know that this blog has been dedicated to fighting mice but I think it needs to be about battling nature in many forms.  Today you are getting the first installment of a subject not centered around mice.  

Yesterday, I was out running all over with my mother and grandmother.  After errands were done, I needed to take my grandmother home to take a nap. My grandmother lives with my parents so that means she lives about one hundred yards away from us.  After dropping Grandma at her house, I went home to finish a few things before I needed to run pick up my kids.  I was sitting at my computer (the computer is located in my bedroom) and noticed a buzzing sound.  I looked around and saw no fewer than 26 large black horse flies attempting to fly out the closed windows.  They were EVERYWHERE!  

Two flies beating their wings - they eventually "beat" their way off the sill and onto the carpet.

 I stared at them for a few minutes and did my best to count how many were there.  26 was my best guess since the little buggers kept flying around.  Well, I may be a coward when it comes to disposing of dead mice but I am no coward when it comes to ending the life an unwelcome insect.  I first thought to run get the fly swatter.  I then took a second to picture myself running around madly swinging the swatter in almost convulsive like maneuvers as I tried to kill each and every fly.   I rethought my plan in an effort to maintain some dignity.  

I  made a decision to join a long line of women assassins. Perhaps you are familiar with the most common method of committing murder used by women?  Well, if not, I won't keep you in suspense.  Women are much more likely to use poison to kill their spouses then any other method.  I had this thought as I ran to the pantry and thought, why not?  I grabbed the bug-poisoning spray and headed back.  Upon returning to my bedroom, I proceeded to literally cover my windows with bug spray.  After I hit them with the poison, the flies started to fall and beat their wings very fast.  I was witnessing their last grasp at survival .  Most of the flies fell into the metal track on the windows  so for the next minute or so, I listened to this intense vibrating sound as the fly's beating wings repeatedly hit the metal.  At last, silence and genocide was complete.

One of the few who died in comfort on the carpet.

2 Days Time

Death Toll Rises to 9


2 Days Time
We have caught another of God's creatures.  As I said earlier, I had heard the scritch scratch of vermin in our attic walls several nights ago.  We decided to put out the traps to see if anything was partaking of our food stores.  Yesterday, nothing.  The traps were left unmolested.  This morning I went into the pantry and one trap was untouched.  However, the other trap was upside down.  All I could see was the legs and tail of a mouse sticking out from under the end of the trap. Apparently it takes two days time for the mice to get wind of the bait set out for them.  This is becoming a pattern for our extermination efforts.  I guess that is good since that probably means less mice are trying to invade our pantry.  


Whenever we catch another mouse I have the strong urge to sing, "Another one bites the dust, Another one bites the dust (I also provide the music in between the two phases)."  I wonder if Freddy Mercury would appreciate his legacy being attached to a dead mouse.  Alas, my teeth are far to straight to pull off that imitation. 


One very nice thing I have noticed recently is we aren't seeing mouse poop.  I think that means we may have cut the overall numbers of mice living in our walls down a bit. Geoffrey loves to point out that I will never achieve a mice-free existence but if I can reduce the number sneaking about in my pantry and kitchen, I will be very happy.  I understand that all creatures have their place in the grand scheme but mice are in no way endangered and are not likely to become so.  I will continue to trap those that venture into our home and then let Geoffrey dispose of them.  Such a nice arrangement.

Back to Battle

Back to Battle

We have had no serious activity for the past week or so.  Nothing had been nibbled or opened, no drops had been sighted.  Then late last night I was up reading (still on Spring Break - insert happy dance here) and heard the very clear sound of animals somewhere in the walls of my bedroom.  Tonight I think we will set the traps again and see if the creature takes the bait.

Perspective

On another note, I was watching TV the other day (Saturday I think) and some station was having a special on infestations.  These were people who had been literally overrun by some form of pest.  Most of the stories were bug or spider related but two were rodent based.  

One family was battling rats but another community was battling a mice plague.  It could only be described as a plague since there were virtually hundreds of thousands of mice that had descended onto farmland in what I believe was Australia.  The showed video footage of the mice running around the fields at night and it looked like the ground itself was moving.  No matter what the people did, there were so many mice that they were breeding faster then they could be killed. The farms grew grain for their cattle and horses as well as for selling.  Because of the extend of the mice pee and poop, all of their bails of hay had to be burned due to fear of disease.  The mice also emptied the farms' grain stores which would have been sold to consumers.  The houses were also overrun so the families feared disease would harm their children.  It was a truly horrific and expensive experience for these farmers.  Eventually, the plague ended because Mother Nature took matters in hand.  The mice had no more food to eat leaving the fields barren.  They resorted to cannibalism and many starved.  Eventually all the mice died and the farmers began re-building their livelihoods.  A years worth of work was gone but finally so were the mice.  

I share this story because it put my situation into perspective.  Geoffrey and I are winning our war against the mice and thank goodness for that.  Lessons learned: Someone always has it worse and don't grow grain.

Sis

No stories today but wanted to give a quick plug.  My sister is writing her own blog now (copycat - just kidding) and you can read all about her at:

http://brieinthebutterdish.wordpress.com/

 Have fun reading!!!

Dirty Little Secret

Death Toll: 8

Dirty Little Secret
Okay, today I need to confess to a dirty little secret.  As I have stated many times, I am not a fan of dealing with dead bodies.  I have a very patient husband who is responsible for creature funerals and I am very happy this is the case. Because of this, I found myself in a very shameful situation this week.  On Monday night, Geoffrey had set the traps again.  In the morning, the peanut butter was gone but they had not been tripped (darn fast mice).  In our rushing daily activities, we sort of forgot the untripped traps.  Tuesday morning comes around and I am home (love Spring Break!) working around the house.  I go into ground zero (aka pantry) and happen to glance down at the floor.  One of the empty traps has managed to kill a mouse.  Well, Geoffrey was already off to work at this point so I did a completely predictable Eileen move.  I closed the door of the pantry and ignored the dead corpse.  All day that dead mouse was in the pantry waiting for its final exit from our house.  Shameful isn't it?  I just couldn't bring myself to reach down and pick up that trap and dead mouse.  Luckily it only had to stay there for the one day.  Geoffrey came home from work and took care of the carcass.  I know there are literally thousands of women who would have had no problem dealing with emptying that trap but I am not one of them.  So here I sit, shamed and knowing it will probably not change any time soon.  But hey, I am still a great salsa dancer - I choose to focus on that.

Points of Entry

Interesting Mouse Fact: A female may have five to 10 litters of usually five or six babies each in one year (http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/pchousemouse.htm).

Death Toll: 7

We have been successful in another battle against the mice.  We employed the redundancy scheme the following night but to no avail.  The traps were left unmolested.  However, last Tuesday night, Geoffrey once again set out two traps in the same location.  I am starting to call the area ground zero, otherwise known as our pantry.  We have been using the peanut butter and I am convinced that this is a very good bait.  When we woke up on Wednesday morning, both traps were not only tripped, but they had also caught two mice.  One brown mouse and one grey mouse.  

Points of Entry

One article I was reading regarding house mice said you must discover points of entry the mice are using to access your living spaces.  This house is a veritable Swiss cheese of entry points for our furry friends.  I went  down the hallway alone and found no fewer than seven mouse doorways.  These doorways are tiny holes at the base of the wall.  The hallway has never had baseboards and so the sheet rock is easy for the mice to nibble through.  Geoffrey and I researched what could be done to help this situation since installing new baseboards is not in the current family budget.  It was suggested that anywhere you find these small holes, fill them with steel wool.  Mice can not chew through the fibers and so it effectively seals the doorway.  So I now have a hallway that is literally polka dotted with dark grey spots where the wall meets the carpet.

On the day we moved in three months ago, we had been cleaning our daughters "new" closet and had found one of these holes.  However the hole in her closet was much larger and surrounded by mouse poop and urine.  We cleaned up the excrement and found we had enough scrap baseboards to seal up that hole.  It would have been too big to use the steel wool trick.  So far our blockades appear to be holding since I haven't found balls of steal wool pushed out into the middle of the carpet.

One of the additional joys of living in this old country house is that we can not adhere to a set of consistent decorating norms.  Everything in this house is and always has been a hodgepodge of left over materials.  My parents business is interiors(wall/window/floor coverings) and so the house is a mosaic of materials from 20+ years of jobs.  So seeing baseboards of one style in our daughters room, no baseboards in the hallway, and a different style of baseboards in the kitchen is just par for the course in this house.  Furthermore, since we are living here in an attempt to save money and find a more secure financial footing, spending money to change these varieties just doesn't seem to make sense.  So for now, we will live with grey polka dotted hallways and continue to search for other points of entry.