Year of the rodent

Tags

mice, rats, rodents, squirrel

With apologies to the Chinese animal zodiac, this has beed a year of the rodent at our home. We trapped and released at least 15 squirrels, the most recent yesterday. And now a smaller rodent, the field mice have decided to be our house guests. Uninvited. In the last 4 days we trapped 4 mice inside the house. And on 2 nights our lab Shady,  who has a very high prey drive, has been on the hunt in the house. She chased one around in Gary’s studio, and another by some exercise equipment. I know there is a mouse caught when Shady alerts to the trap.

We don’t catch and release mice. We use the lethal traps. I remember when I was growing up in a tenement building in the Bronx my father used to trap rats in the closet by the front door. He used a large rat trap, sometimes we’d hear it snap shut during the night and we knew he got another rat.

I’ll spare you a photo of a dead mouse in a trap.

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Mice Frolic While Terriers Sleep

Tags

mice

A pair of dead mice, trapped by Gary and prepped for burial in a baggie. Their next stop is the garbage barrel, then on to the landfill.
Our pack of 3 rat terriers and 1 chihuahua failed to kill them. Or even detect them. Terriers are supposed to live to hunt rodents.
I saw a mouse run across our bedroom floor yesterday evening. One of the terriers, Stacy, was sound asleep on the bed while the mouse was hangin’ in the room. Not a good terrier performance.
So, we humans put out a few traps.

Suzie Snoozing

Tags

Dogs, mice, rat terrier

Suzie snoozes on the back of a couch, while mice raid the pantry.

So far Gary has caught 1 mouse in a trap, Suzie and her 2 rat terrier pack mates have caught 0 mice.

Mice

Tags

mice, rat terriers

We discovered that our pantry has become home to some mice. Rat terriers Suzie, Lacy, and Stacy have failed at their job of rodent control. Or maybe they retired. And I can’t find our mousetraps, Gary thought we had a dozen or so.

Rats Arrive

Tags

mice, rat terriers, rats, vermin, work

I’m not talking about rat terriers, one my favorite dog breeds – we have 3 of them – but the other kind of rat. The unwanted kind. The vermin kind. The building that I work in, nicknamed Katrina West by myself and colleague B.B., has rats. Field mice were observed in the fall and traps put out for them. This week several rats were caught in these traps.  I personally have not seen either rats or mice.

When the mice were discovered I offered to bring in a couple of rat terriers to provide rodent control services. One of mine has a very high prey drive and likely would kill some mice. This was declined.

Ours is not the only new county building to be populated with vermin. The new juvenile jail/court building has the same problem. I heard from a good source that a judge there has been bringing in her own pair of Persian cats, and they have been effective in keeping her office rodent free. County politics being what they are, no one will tell a judge that she cannot user her cats for this purpose. In our county:

Elected officials believe they answer only to God

Except for the judges, for whom the reporting relationship is reversed

Only half kidding about this.