Mousie - bonus post

This is the post I meant to put up Friday and didn't. So you get an extra one this weekend. Thank me later. 

It's been a while, but we've got some new mouse evidence. 

We'd done away with anyone who previously had been coming up to the living room/kitchen area, and months have passed since we've seen anyone. 

After we got back from our trip, I went to water my plants, and one of them had all the dirt dug out of it and thrown about. Oh really. Oh nice. Thank you. 

I noticed some styrofoam shreds around, which indicated they'd been pulling on part of the pad in the dog kennel. Investigating the kennel, indeed. The seam of the mat was torn open, little teethies marks visible. Hmmmm, I see. 

And then, the cardboard recycling. Geoff had gotten it organized and put out on Tuesday, but there was a wee pile of shredded cardboard, probably from the pizza box, which unlike the other cardboard had food in it still, because pizza cheese. Alright, so it's gonna be that way.

Sad to say we'll be putting out traps. I've said it before, I'll say it again: it is a hard world for small things. But the small things can live outside, or, not be so audacious as to come throw dirt all around from my freaking plants. Take the styrofoam you pull out and go build your nest somewhere, don't let me see you. And for goodness sake, do not leave mouse poopies in my livingroom. Sigh.

We've had mice before. Our 1774 house that I loved so dearly was a hotbed of wee mousies. I recall a certain dog food container that didn't have the lid on it - and I was sitting in the living room one night hearing thump thump thump thump over and over. Two little beans had fallen into the humongous rubbermaid container and were attempting to leap out. I put the lid on it, Doug took the mice away, and drove them to a farm in Boxford, releasing them at the back end where the hay hopper was so they could live forever with the cows. Or get stepped on. Or freeze to death. But they'd be out of our house and that was the important thing. 

I seriously thought it would make a nice children's book. Geoff called it the Mouse Letting Go Place. A friend I used to work with who lives in Massachusetts has had the same problem. He set up a motion detector camera in his living room and there were two mice, throwing dirt around in one of his very large house plants. He caught them in a trap and I told him about the Mouse Letting Go Place. He should find one similar and put them out in a field. 

Maybe they take hay from the hopper, and find a hollow spot in that tree nearby and the cows talk to them. Maybe. 

Here's my plant - very glad they haven't chewed any of them.