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

Tags

Dogs, mice, rat terrier, rodents

We have mice. A couple of days ago I took an item from my pantry and noticed that it had been “sampled” – a bit of it was eaten and not by any family member or guest. Looking at the shelf where this item was stored I saw bits of the wrapper shredded up. We have mice.

I bought some traps. Gary set them, and this morning we had proof – as if we needed any more – a little grey mouse caught. It looked sleek, shiny, and plump. Well fed. Now dead. (there’s a haiku here but that much creativity escapes me right now – anybody?)

Our rat terrier, Suzie Lightning, is a hunter and a predator. She is always lunging at birds, shoving her nose into gopher holes, etc. And her breed was molded to kill rodents. Perhaps we have a partial solution to the mouse problem here? So we let her sniff at the mouse. She found it very interesting and seemed disappointed that it did not wind up in her breakfast bowl. Maybe she will catch one, we’ll see.