Spice of Life

Well Hello There!
It has been a LONG time since I was able to sit down and enjoy some blogging.  I started a new job in August and time is not something I have in excess.  That new development has not changed the battle on the home front and it is time to share our recent activities.  You will, of course, have to forgive me if my grammar skills continue to be problematic.  That also has not changed.

Once again the weather has turned chilly and the rains are on and off.  Well if I am being honest the rains are mostly off since we usually get single digit inches of rain each year but for us, its been wet.  When this cooling trend happens, animals of all sizes seek out warm places to hunker down.  Our summers are very warm (many days over 100 degrees F) so rodent activity largely happens outdoors.  Now is the time of the hunkering and a warm, well stocked house is very desirable.

Before I go into specifics about our recent victories, I must preface with the fact that the mice that have entered our home this year seem to be of a lower cognitive ability.  Now I realize the cognitive abilities of mice can be debated but I have been impressed with what these small furry creatures are able to accomplish.  As an example of this lower cognition trend, lets get into the details of our first kill of the season.

Spice of Life
Several weeks ago a lady at work was pulling out the final peppers and tomatoes out of her garden.  Due to a warm early fall, we had tomatoes all the way into late November.   This lady asked if I liked jalapenos and, as most self respecting native Californians would, I said I loved them. (Side note: if you don't understand Spanish pronunciation, the j is pronounced like an h, the e is pronounced like a long a sound, and n is pronounced like an ny sound or rather hall-uh-pay-nyo).  The next day she brought me a small basket of tomatoes and three jalapenos.

Over the weekend, I used one of the jalapenos and the tomatoes to make salsa.  My husband, also a native Californian, ate the other jalapeno raw.  The third jalapeno was left sitting out in the counter.  The next morning, I was making breakfast and noticed something.  The end of the jalapeno was gone.  It look as though my husband had taken a bite out of it.  I asked him and he told be that he hadn't eaten the jalapeno.  I then noticed some lovely black droppings on the counter and my suspicions were confirmed.  We had a mouse and the mouse was clearly a native Californian. 

View One of the Jalapeno - if you look closely you can see the tiny bite marks

View Two of the Jalapeno - seeds and all for a spicy mouse!

 Needless to say the traps were set that night.  In the morning, the trap was still set but the peanut butter we had put on it was gone - a very lucky mouse indeed.  The trap sat  that way (un-baited) for two days.  On the third day, I walked out to the kitchen to make breakfast and came face to face with my native Californian mouse.  Well, I should say my native DEAD Californian mouse. The stupid mouse had been killed by an un-baited mouse trap.  I call it genetic cleansing.  This is the first round of my anecdotal evidence that these mice may be lucky but they are not the caliber we faced last year.  More to come...

Death toll had risen to 10