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

[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.