It would be simply fabulous to tell you that Ruff at age 19 is the premier mouse catcher of North Puffin but it simply ain't true. This page contains a counter of the mice Ruff caught this year, the mice I caught this year, and the mice that got away.
"Mouse" is used generically here to include most rodents, squirrels, and chipmunks.
Our mouses typically invade when it begins to get cold outside. That means that all winter I had mouses in my house eating my cookies and the darned cat was sleeping through it.
We have a "Hav-A-Hart" trap, the kind that is a steel cage designed to capture critters live so we great (white) hunters can transport them humanely to a better place, because our mice are smart enough to steal the treats out of an ordinary mouse trap without getting caught. One wintry afternoon, I heard a metal-on-metal snap from the dining room. The Hav-A-Hart was in the dining room that week, parked on the official International Mouseway near the Christmas tree. The sound was exactly like the familiar slap of its trap door.
Except I knew it was already sprung.
There was still some cookie left on the trip treadle. The mouse was trying to get into the trap.
One not very streetwise mouse was transiting the front stairs when Anne was coming down and I was going up. We had him in the crossfire and that's all she wrote. Score one for the good guys.
Another smallish mouse apparently stripped the bait out of our Hav-A-Hart, then tripped the gate on the way out to remind us to refill it. That would be the mouse who ran across the kitchen floor behind the plumber. Surprised me, that did, but the plumber didn't notice.
I did refill it and sure enough, the mouselet ate all the food (I use a stale cookie that we don't particularly like but he apparently does). Then he trippped the trap again to ask us for seconds.
We did finally give up and put out D-Con bait. The results don't smell too bad in the winter. Those numbers aren't recorded in the count.
The current Hav-A-Hart trap is really too big for small mouses because small mouses can squeeze out between the gaps in the cage. I don't think small mouses have actual bones. It works well for large mouses and, of course, for the chipmunk that has since joined Alvin in the recording studio in the sky.
I think we need a bigger trap because I saw something the size of a cocker spaniel eating the pancake mix. When it saw me it waddled incredibly quickly across the floor and disappeared. It can apparently make itself small, too. I rebaited the Hav-A-Hart with honey roasted peanut butter on a cracker just before supper and, after some scurrying in the kitchen, the trap is empty and the critter is laughing over its dessert.
The weather has finally turned the corner. The mouses who are supposed to be living outside because it is warm and friendly out there have decided it's warmer and friendlier inside. This is a good news/bad news story. I put out another D-Con bait over in a hallway where Ruff is not allowed to travel.
Mouses like the bait, but it's as bad for a cat as it is for them. The good news is that the mouses have started eating the bait and soon will be no more. The bad news is that the mouses have started eating the bait and soon will be no more inside the summery walls of our house.
The other day I heard some squeaking coming from the dining room or kitchen, loud and pronounced enough that I thought Ruff had caught a mouse.
Nope.
It was Ruff all right. Snoring.
I'm here to tell you D-Con works. We killed a rodent the size of a small warthog with it. It was either the scuttling critter we last saw running behind the plumber or it was that critter's bigger and at first smarter brother.
Mouses ........................
0 0 0 0 1 7 Ruff ........................
0 0 0 0 0 1 Dick ........................
0 0 0 0 0 9
Why smarter, you ask?
D-Con is a hemorrhagic agent. The rodent had obviously raided the first aid box because when we found him he had a bandaid wrapper attached to his butt.
Our daughter and son-in-law were here; he pointed the beastie out to me. Anne freaked. I poo pooed it, because the carcass was about the size and color of Ruffy's electric mouse toy. On closer examination, it wasn't Ruffy's electric mouse toy.
For the record, I think I should get two points on the counter (or maybe three) for this one, but I took only one.
It is a far far better thing the beastie did to die
in the kitchen than to die in the kitchen wall.
