Meeces

[poliphilo]

I went in the bathroom last night and a tiny, dark hallucination went streaking across the floor. "Ach, that's what comes of staying up too late staring at the monitor," I thought, but then the hallucination, instead of disappearing, started running round and round in circles and I had time to identify it. A mouse. Finally it quit panicking and ran to the corner and hid. And here's something I didn't know before- mice don't realise they have tails. I located it behind the toilet cleaner and it bolted behind the toilet pedestal and every hiding place it chose it forgot to tuck its tail in. After a while I gave up trying to catch it and just opened the bathroom door and invited it to find its own way out.

I'm torn between "how cute" and "oh drat".

I told Ailz this morning. She proposes getting a batch of these plug-in doodads she's seen advertised that emit a ultra-sound screetch that mice can't abide. A sort of Pied Piper effect in reverse.

P.S. Since I wrote the above, Ailz has been looking on-line and she finds that the screetching doodads also disgust spiders. What, drive out our lucky spiders that catch the flies? No way! So we need to do a rethink. I propose humane traps. Then I can take the meeces out the back and let them loose in the long grass. I absolutely refuse to kill them.

Comments

[dadi.livejournal.com]

Rent a cat? Maybe a nice, lazy playful one.. that doesn't kill the mice, just scares them away ?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We used to have cats. I'd go down into the kitchen and there'd be little mutilated mouse and bird bodies lying on the floor. O dear, o dear, o dear.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

If you catch a house mouse and release it in the garden one of two things will happen:

1. It will return to the house.
2. Being a house mouse, it will fail dismally to survive outdoors.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder where it's come from?

Probably from the house next door. This is a terrace property.

Ho hum.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I used to catch them, put them in large aquaria with shredded newspapers, privacy boxes, etc., and feed them cheddar till their little tummies bulged. Somehow, they still wanted to escape, the ingrates.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I kept mice when I was a child. I remember it as emotionally wearing, because they had such short lives and one kept finding them dead.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The humane traps work well, and you give them a fresh start in life!

I once trapped nineteen mice in a single winter.

(Or the same mouse nineteen times, says Kate.)

No, really! They were all different colors--some had gray round ears, some had brown ears, some had curly fur--and I got to see them up close, because I had a small relationship with each one that lasted from the moment I discovered them in their traps until I carried them across the road into the vacant lot and opened the trapdoor with a stick.

"Go! Hurry up!" I invariably said. Some of them would hang back, some would dash right off.

And they all got a nice meal, too--they LOVE peanut butter on crackers. Better than cheese!

I vote for the humane traps. Also, I worry about those sonic emitters: what if, on a very deep level, you can react to them yourself, and don't know it? Maybe you find yourself tensing up and not knowing why!

Not worth testing it. Besides, it might be like torture to--say, moths.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We'll see how it goes.

Maybe this particular mouse was a aberration- a country mouse who had strolled in from the great outdoors and, once evicted from the bathroom, was only too glad to hurry back to his native pastures.

I haven't had this problem before. In the past the only mice who have ever showed up have been the ones the cats brought in- usually well chewed.

[jenny_evergreen]

Not being you, I'll stick with "how cute!" ;)

There are non-killer cats; I know, I have four. I once had to rescue a fly that was s l o w l y and accidentally being beaten to death by Magic's curiously tap...tap...tapping paw. (That sentence truly doesn't capture the moment, btw. It was both horrifying and absolutely hilarious.)

If you want to avoid future mice, I hear the big thing is to hunt for where it got in and block it off.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is a big, old, draughty Edwardian house. There are gaps and chinks everywhere. That's one of its "charms". It would be impossible to stop up all the possible routes a mouse might use.

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Portland, Oregon I kept the windows open through most of the year. My windows didn't have screens yet I seldom had insects inside and never one mosquito (no mousies either, because of our fierce cat, Joop). I did, however, have small spiders in the corners. They would come in during Springtime and depart in Winter. I guess they were my screens.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This isn't mosquito country. Mostly we get flies, bees and wasps. Ailz is troubled by their buzzing and bumbling. I scarcely notice.

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

i got two of those supposedly insect and mouse repelling thingys last summer in the hopes that they'd repel the HUGE spiders that i kept seeing.
they did not.
i didn't have mice to begin with so perhaps they would work for them and you would be able to keep your spiders (EWWWW~!).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like spiders. I'm an arachnophile. There aren't any poisonous species in Britain, so I just let them be. They attach huge webs to the clothes line in the back yard- so beautiful!

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

spiders may be the only creatures that i am openly hostile toward. (although my malice is limited by my refusal to get too close...) snakes, slugs- no problem. i think with spiders it's the eyes, too many of them. creepy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd rather have a spider than a slug anyday.

Snakes I'm fine with- so long as they're not poisonous.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

As one who recently is rid of this year's mouse problem, I sympathize. Unfortunately, I got the plain old break their neck mousie traps and killed 'em. That was all I could do.

Here at work, we have mice - of course we do, it's a big buidling and lots of tempting treats for little mousies. We had one in the office for awhile, named him Marvin. They wanted to put down those horrible glue traps - I found a mouse face on one of those...couldn't stand the thought of some poor mousie running around dying without a face. I said NO WAY, no glue traps in here.

So, we have mousies at the law school. We keep everything in metal containers, and that's all we can do.

Still regret having killed those mousies...but they got into my flour and sugar and ran across my silverware and left calling cards in my silverware drawer. Very unhealthy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A mouse with its face ripped off- that's horrible.

I think our sugar and flour and rice are safe. I very much hope so. If I see any signs of them being tampered with I shall have to act.

At the moment I'm proposing to live and let live.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Yes. If you want to keep them in metal or glass containers, that would be very safe.

I don't enjoy killing any living creature.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have metal containers for most things.

The rice we buy in a HUGE bag made of denim (really.)I guess a determined mouse could gnaw its way though. I must keep my eye on it.

[butterscotch711.livejournal.com]

My housemate was about to go and fork out money for one of those ultra-sonic plug-in things a couple of weeks ago, but I made him do research about them beforehand - and everything he looked up said that they just don't work. So not getting them is probably a good thing.

Growing up, we never had problems with mice - but we did sometimes have problems with snakes. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's good to know that about the plug-ins. They struck me as a slightly screwy idea.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Very enchanted that you live with spiders. I do, too. Hey, it's Texas and I like to leave the back door open a lot. Spiders are my allies in the fight against flies and mosquitos.

I had a mouse a few years ago. I ended up putting everything edible (flour, etc) in glass jars and he eventually died. I found his little dessicated corpse on the floor of the hall closet one day. Please -- I don't use the hall closet very often.

My father (lifelong seller of pesticides) is appalled that I don't kill household pests, but I have enough bad karma as it is. Oh, except for silverfish. I kill silverfish with glee, because they are my big fear. Go figure. I live in a state where we have three inch roaches. Sometimes they fly. That, I can deal with. Silverfish? GGGGGGAAAAHHHH.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The only insects that bother me are moths. There's something about their fat little bodies and powdery wings that gives me the creeps.

When I was a very little kid I turned round in the bath to find a very big moth floating in the water behind me.

I got out so fast......