In olden times, the fairies would come to people’s houses and clean up for them, in exchange of a little milk or some other food. But over the centuries, the fairies noticed that this created a dependency on part of the humans. Therefore they decided to help the humans to help themselves and turned into mice.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
This is the 15th time I caught a mouse in the cellar in the last two weeks. There is no way we had 15 mice in the cellar. I know what a mouse nest in the cellar looks like: tons of droppings, shredded fabric and paper, as well as the stink. I’ve been cleaning the cellar and so far I haven’t found more than a tiny bit of droppings. They ate the wax and wood barbecue lighters and the soap, but the rest of the food is rodent proof in boxes. But I also haven’t found their way in yet. We’re trying to mouse proof all the potential entrances, but no luck so far. We’re also putting them out further and further away.
But well, we are not tidy people. We are people who put things into boxes, put boxes into corners and then proceed to ignore the boxes, so in a way the mice are doing us a favour by making us clean.
EDIT: We found a small lair. Let the cleaning continue
I have a constant battle against mice. We have the deer mouse here, which are known to carry Hantavirus, so I have to be extra careful -- and yes, there have been cases of Hantavirus right here in my neighborhood. (Or maybe I should just call it, “my general area”.) Mice can overrun a place pretty darn fast so I have to be vigilant. I do find mice charming, and have kept them as pets in the past, but the risk of disease is no joke. Despite what a lot of people seem to think about Covid.
My mice clean up anything they can chew their way into and leave little mounds of poop as a “thank you!”
Its war to the death.
We have a problem with rats. We now have several cats, but even that hasn’t solved the problem.
We are putting a trail camera in various locations outside our house to try to track their habits and figure out how they are getting in. We’ve also got metal garbage cans to store stuff in, rather than boxes they can chew through.
If we have mice or worse rats Jake alerts us, he starts sniffing the bottom of the kitchen cupboards where they tend to have their runs. So far this has meant that we have managed to deal with them before they have gotten as far as eating anything. For a German Shepherd he is a remarkably good ratter. Paul seems to have found all of the holes to the inside of the house, but they still get in the cavity of the cavity walls, you can hear them move around.
No mouse today, all the Nutella toast still there. So I’m mildly hopeful. The house itself should be pretty safe, but there’s windows and stuff, with one of them having to be open at all times because of the furnace.