Within the first month of living here, we heard scurrying in the walls from time to time. We suspected mice, but figured that as long as they stayed in the walls we were o.k. with it. During a renovation of our kitchen we discovered mouse poop in crooks and crannies. Still, yet to actually see a bugger, we ignored it. Finally, in November we saw one. It darted from a teeny hole in our living room wall across the floor. We officially had a problem, but were still at odds with how to solve it. A week later I was cleaning through the clutter that had accumulated in our living room. We had bought a jumbo bag of black sunflower seeds for our bird feeder and haphazardly set it on the floor. As I picked it up to properly store it, I noticed the top two inches seeds had been eaten, the shells left behind. What a fool!! I thought. I had left a buffet for the mice in the middle of the living room! That was no way to rid myself of them.
On an evening soon after this discovery we pulled something out of our spare room closet. The four of us were in the room. Me, Joseph and the two weiner dogs. The mouse sped from the closet to a pile of papers, then quickly behind the filing cabinet. I closed the door. It was time to trap this guy. The dogs were excited but approximately five minutes behind the mouse. The mouse had made it back to the closet and my dogs were still avidly sniffing the pile of papers the mouse had been under ages ago. While Joseph and I tried to figure out what to trap him in if we actually could catch up to him, he sped under the door, into the hallway and under the door leading to the basement. We were now complete failures with an official mouse problem.
I consulted my neighbors. Was everyone dealing with this problem? Yes. My friend Laura broke it down for me. "When you are surrounded by fields, you're going to get field mice". And if I didn't deal with it now, it would only get more serious. According to Mother Earth magazine (best magazine ever for newbie country folk), just a couple of mice can rapidly grow into a colony. I also found out that mice don't have bladders, so as they scurry around they are dripping urine down their legs and all over the house. "Oh no he didn't!" I thought with a newly formed ball of rage in my belly. The locals were employing poisons and glue traps, but I couldn't bring myself to do that even if they were incontinent. Neither could Joseph. I considered buying a fish tank and collecting them as pets. This idea did not receive favorable reviews.
We finally settled on a trapping and relocating program. We purchased a mouse trap container from Tractor Supply and loaded it with cookies and peanut butter. By morning, we had two mice. We certainly didn't want to get caught dropping off the critters outside someone else's house so Joseph drove the two prisoners to a church about five miles away.
The next week yielded more success. We took our new detainees on a run. Roughly one mile from our house we released them into a big field. I wanted to start some kind of marking and tracking system but spraying them with paint before letting them loose didn't seem like a very humane thing to do.
This guy had some reservations about leaving prison. I've heard of that happening to people before.
We're up to about 7 mice and we've been relocating them for about a month now. In an effort to keep the population slim around the perimeter of the house we are going to build a barn owl box. According to Mother Earth News, a pair of barn owls can eat up to 50 mice per week! Additionally, it would be awesome to have a resident owl. I was a bit skeptical of the "if you build it they will come" concept, but Mother Earth News and various websites find it to be a perfectly reasonable expectation to attract a barn owl with a nice little nesting box. And although we would be facilitating the death of many mice, I find it much more honest to have an owl taking care of business than tricking the mice with little poison pellets.
In the meantime, the relocation program will continue.
On an evening soon after this discovery we pulled something out of our spare room closet. The four of us were in the room. Me, Joseph and the two weiner dogs. The mouse sped from the closet to a pile of papers, then quickly behind the filing cabinet. I closed the door. It was time to trap this guy. The dogs were excited but approximately five minutes behind the mouse. The mouse had made it back to the closet and my dogs were still avidly sniffing the pile of papers the mouse had been under ages ago. While Joseph and I tried to figure out what to trap him in if we actually could catch up to him, he sped under the door, into the hallway and under the door leading to the basement. We were now complete failures with an official mouse problem.
I consulted my neighbors. Was everyone dealing with this problem? Yes. My friend Laura broke it down for me. "When you are surrounded by fields, you're going to get field mice". And if I didn't deal with it now, it would only get more serious. According to Mother Earth magazine (best magazine ever for newbie country folk), just a couple of mice can rapidly grow into a colony. I also found out that mice don't have bladders, so as they scurry around they are dripping urine down their legs and all over the house. "Oh no he didn't!" I thought with a newly formed ball of rage in my belly. The locals were employing poisons and glue traps, but I couldn't bring myself to do that even if they were incontinent. Neither could Joseph. I considered buying a fish tank and collecting them as pets. This idea did not receive favorable reviews.
We finally settled on a trapping and relocating program. We purchased a mouse trap container from Tractor Supply and loaded it with cookies and peanut butter. By morning, we had two mice. We certainly didn't want to get caught dropping off the critters outside someone else's house so Joseph drove the two prisoners to a church about five miles away.
The next week yielded more success. We took our new detainees on a run. Roughly one mile from our house we released them into a big field. I wanted to start some kind of marking and tracking system but spraying them with paint before letting them loose didn't seem like a very humane thing to do.
This guy had some reservations about leaving prison. I've heard of that happening to people before.
We're up to about 7 mice and we've been relocating them for about a month now. In an effort to keep the population slim around the perimeter of the house we are going to build a barn owl box. According to Mother Earth News, a pair of barn owls can eat up to 50 mice per week! Additionally, it would be awesome to have a resident owl. I was a bit skeptical of the "if you build it they will come" concept, but Mother Earth News and various websites find it to be a perfectly reasonable expectation to attract a barn owl with a nice little nesting box. And although we would be facilitating the death of many mice, I find it much more honest to have an owl taking care of business than tricking the mice with little poison pellets.
In the meantime, the relocation program will continue.
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