Well, I won’t go around claiming that the Great Mouse Invasion ’06 is “over.” But I can say that the herds and packs of mice, and the constant snapping of traps in the background, are gone. We haven’t trapped a mouse in at least four days, and we haven’t heard or seen a live one in that time either. A few days ago, Critter Control came again, long after the siege, and the man was stunned– STUNNED– by my story. He was appalled and even (I’m upset to report) disgusted. Our situation DISGUSTED the exterminator! He said that the sheer quantity of poison that he put in the basement, and the fact that it had been entirely devoured, “doesn’t add up.” And that we ALSO captured — we estimate– about 40 (!!) mice ourselves in the preceding hell week, it all points to his conclusion: “Let’s just say you have a LOT of mice!” Okay, the professional verdict. I could have told you that!
He spread around more of a more lethal poison in the basement. And says that the mice appear to be burrowing through the dirt/loose mortar in our handmade, 120-some-year-old basement walls. He recommends that we have the whole basement power washed and then lined with concrete. Probably that would do it, but … sounds pricy. I need to gather yet more bids to see if that’s feasible.
But the skittishness still remains, by in large. I’m no longer terrified of the kitchen, and I even got bold enough to take the big repeating trap away from the counter yesterday. We’ve been cooking in there again (during the siege we couldn’t bear it and ate out night after night, which gets to be no fun after a while). (People do that in New York, but it seems funner there.) Do I still jump at my own shadow? At seeing the cat out of the corner of my eye? do I still persistently listen for the scuffling? Yes.
One thing I’ve learned in all this is that mice are not cute. No– the ones you see in the pet store should be fed to snakes as soon as possible. You see, Beatrix Potter omitted some important details about the real life of mice. For instance, did she mention that they are ruthless CANNIBALS? For example? Did she tell us that if one mouse is killed in a trap, some other mice may come and gnaw on its dead body, or even DRAG AWAY their fallen brethren and eat them in their entirety?
I told this to the Critter Control guy, expecting a jaded, “Yeah, they’ll do that.” But what did he say instead? “EEEEEUW.” I didn’t find this comforting at all!
At least it’s not rats. That’s the only thing I’ve found at all consoling during this ordeal. Since this has been going on, people have been coming forth and telling me their vermin stories and I can tell you the RAT ones are the most chilling, revolting and unbearable of all.
Also, I’m starting to believe that it could be… almost over. At least this round. Today I caught myself in sock feet- IN THE KITCHEN! I’d forgotten my protective footwear. I was leaning on the counter (which we’ve taken to compulsively disinfecting) and reading the paper. Just like a normal person without mice on the brain.
Also I wanted to mention that our cat, Zane Grey, may well have eaten a lot more mice in her free time (she has a busy schedule of nearly 18 hours a day of sleep to work around) than I realized. I don’t want to wrongfully besmirch her reputation. The evidence: I saw her catch one in the living room. I saw her duck under an easy chair (the kind with a skirt hiding its feet). I saw the mouse escape and I saw her very skillfully chase it down and return with it in her Jaws. I expected that later, when Ben came home, he would find half the little carcass under the chair. (I wasn’t about to look.) But then, amazingly, he looked and there was nothing. Not a trace. Seems she devoured the entire thing nose to tail. Or maybe it escaped…? But I don’t think so. She seemed to have the situation completely under control. Also there’s the thing about her food dish. Once it was obvious that the mice were pouring into the laundry room and eating the pet food (they hid inside Lena’s treat-dispensing toy, making loud crunching sounds; they ran to and fro the cat’s bowl), I stopped putting food in there. I figured that the cat would come and beg to be fed, which she does whenever I forget, and that I would feed her on the spot. But then I noticed something. Hm. Is she starving to death? I haven’t fed her in DAYS? And yet… she’s not hungry, not at all. This led me to an aha moment. Aha! She’s fat and happy eating mice like they’re going out of style.
I’m still very proud of Lena dog for catching two and chasing many.
Ben’s life was miserable there for a while, constantly emptying crushed mice from blood-soaked snap traps, and then also taking live-trapped mice on long scenic drives to release them someplace where they would be more likely to be eaten by hawks than to invade someone else’s home. Since we live smack in the middle of dense housing, this is a far away thing. (Stripped of sentimentality, I suggested drowning them– just immersing the whole trap in a bucket– but Ben couldn’t deal with that either.) Also he was frantically trying to keep the house free from hanta virus. I read an article that mentioned helpfully that everywhere mice go “they leave a microscopic trail of urine drops.” This appalled us both and we’ve been using disinfecting wipes all over everything.
Isaac was incredibly brave and instinctively took it upon himself to protect me. I really didn’t raise him to be macho– he has a doll, in fact he has three!– but he acted like Rambo through all this. “I’m not afraid of mice!” he told me repeatedly. He lined up fierce creatures to scare the mice in the stove. For example, I came in one afternoon and found quite a crowd standing there looking at the oven, including a ferocious T-Rex and a large green plastic snake. During the seige I got a new Pilates ball with a new pump. Isaac took to the pump, and began to call it “my gun.” Although he said this in something of a cowboy accent, “m’GUN!” He carried it around with him and fired it– a hiss of air– whenever needed. Sometimes he poked it under the stove or under the piano (when we knew a mouse was in there) and puffed air under there. I’m sure it DID scare the hell out of the mice, actually. Around the same time, one evening some drunk idiot came alongside our house apparently looking for a place to take a piss. But he saw us in the dining room, saw that PEOPLE were here and that it was not at all private. He stumbled away. Isaac was holding his gun at the time and believed that that warded off the pisser. He said, “Maybe he saw m’GUN! Maybe he said, ‘I don’t want to mess with that kid! That kid is pretty tough!'” (Maybe so. Or maybe he didn’t want me calling the cops.) And he very cutely misinterpreted my use of the word “drunk.” I guess I said, “He’s drunk…” because later I heard Isaac explaining, “There was this man, named DRUNK…”
I appreciated Isaac’s bravado so much. I was glad on the one hand that he was not at all put off or disturbed by the mice– more interested and excited by all the goings-on. I also honestly appreciated that he was here in the house with me during the long hours of no Ben, and would escort me to the kitchen, scaring mice away left and right.
But it’s better now– I won’t say over, because I’m sure a few more will pop up. I’ve gotten a contractor lined up to fix the fascia (the whole squirrel problem seems so quaint now…) and he will also patch the basement foundation where it has the largest most gaping holes. That work will be done in about two weeks. Also– SPRING is helping I think. It’s all of 35 degrees today, with a bitter wind, but the daffodils are up in all but the shadiest locations. The forsythia is bursting out, and the dogwoods are all covered with fat buds. Maybe, as Isaac says, “the mice said ‘I don’t like this place. They keep killing us all the time!'” and have gone away? And while they’re gone for the summer (hopefully being killed by stray cats as they exit) we will devote ourselves to making this house as tight as humanly possible. A vermin-proof fortress. A rodent-free zone.