Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Cute… but uninvited "guests"!

Cute... but uninvited “guests”!

Cute little brown furry critters, also known as field mice, have been inundating local residences in seemingly unusual numbers this year.  We actually have set traps in our cars parked in the garage.

This brought to mind some of the mouse antics we’ve seen in years’ past.

It’s true that when you live in the country you get used to the “Fall Exodus” of mice from the fields into the house.   But usually they get the hint they aren’t wanted after some traps are set.  

I favored the traps that caught them in a cage so I could release them outside.  Although I wondered if I wasn’t just releasing the same mouse time after time?

  Then I recalled finding one mouse who had found his own little swimming pool in the house.   It’s called a toilet.

And then there was the little mouse playing hide and seek in my kitchen cupboards.  I’d open a door and it would run and hide.  I played this game for a while -trying to remove bowls, etc. so I could plop a plastic container over him.  But he hopped out and ran away.  And I washed alot of dishes!  And made sure to keep the cupboard doors closed after that.

This reminded me of Pat Jones telling me about the time she took the lid off her coffee pot and saw a mouse in it!  I’ve never opened a pot since then without thinking of that!

One morning I saw a small critter looking at me through the inside screen in the living room window.  He couldn’t move away because the outer glass window had been cranked shut the night before and this little fellow’s tail had gotten trapped.  We didn’t know he was there. But now I saw the chew marks he had made trying to escape.
As I cranked open the window to release him I saw that his tail looked permanently bent to the shape of the window sill.  I wonder what kind of story he told when he got home!

Then there’s the time I had left some tall long stemmed wine glasses next to the sink to wash the next morning.  But the next day I saw mouse turds in them!  
I couldn’t figure out how the mice had climbed into the tall glasses without tipping them over.  Or was it a team of mice balancing on each other to climb up to the lip of the glass and drop in?
Actually, what was worse was the fact that it looked like they were having a party in my house... and I hadn’t been invited!


And so the games continue!

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