From time to time we get mice in the house. If the sight of their droppings bothers us enough, we set traps. Not those cruel spring-loaded things, of course: these are plastic boxes with little doors. You put cheese or something in there at the far end and set it down carefully with the door open. Then (1) mouse smells bait, (2) mouse walks into box, (3) box tips slightly with added weight, (4) door swings shut. All you have to do then is pick it up and take it outside and let the thing go. Well, maybe you don't want to just take it out to the yard -- it would probably come right back in. Well, maybe you don't want to just put it next to the neighbors' house, either: not fair to make the mouse move into their house instead. So you take it to a little patch of woods at the end of the street. Your child might be a little troubled by the thought that the mousie is so far away that it might never see its family again. You might even be a little troubled by the same thought, but you stifle it.
The first time I ever did this, I had an embarrassing false alarm: got all the way to the patch of woods before I figured out that there was nothing in the box. It had been sprung somehow without catching anybody, and I had jumped to a conclusion. Well, I didn't want to open it before I got there! It could have jumped out!
One time we caught a mouse in winter. The way the snow was falling that night, we couldn't see turning it out of the house: it must be so hard digging yourself a burrow when the ground is frozen and you're shivering. We improvised a temporary cage and reset the trap. A few hours later we had three of them in captivity and the weather was not letting up. So we borrowed a proper cage from some neighbors who no longer had gerbils or hamsters, put our three temporary pets in it and waited for a thaw.
A Salt Hygrometer
19 hours ago
3 comments:
Last year I made a nest in the snow, underneath the garbage can; it's a long way from the house. During the winter there are many mice living in the straw on the floor of our goathouse. Sometimes they drown in the water buckets; now I put a stick in so they can scramble ashore. They run across Vesla's back and she freaks out, poor goat.
You made a nest in the snow for the mice? Did they use it?
I've never had a mouse run across my back, but I was once startled by one while while kayaking. It must have woke up when its house became a boat. It ran around under me, its fur tickling the back of my thighs.
They used it for a few days, in a crunch.
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