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Duck season, rabbit season...
Mar. 25th, 2011 10:06 pm...mouse season.
Sometimes I hate spring. Spring means that the overgrown vacant lot directly behind our house thaws, and the what must be thousands of mice wake up and go on the move. Unfortunately for us, this means that we get new tenants who scramble through our walls and chew goddamn everything.
Unfortunately for them, last season (almost exactly around this time, actually) meant that I had given up on trying to let them live and went on a killing rampage with inexpensive yet very efficient traps.
They have the same MO this year - don't actually eat anything, just leave pellets and dust everywhere and freak us out in the kitchen at 4am. Elsa alerted me to their presence today, and I am so not having any of this. She's frustrated because cabinet mice are different from wall mice in that they are out of her reach, so hunting duties fall to me this time around. Elsa is still on bug-catching patrol, though.
I contacted uDon, and since poison and fumigation are not an option, all I have left are a) kill traps and b) blocking their means of egress. I cleaned and disinfected the shelves and counters tonight, then studied the enemy. There are three places they could be utilizing: a hole in the topmost shelf, a hole in the second-highest shelf, and a ripped out piece of insulation in the windowsill that I've seen them dash into. The first two were blocked with plexiglass, and the last was stuffed with suffocating plastic. I then set traps within inches of each to see how effective my preventative measures were.
We shall see in the morning. No telltale snaps yet; no news is good news.
Sometimes I hate spring. Spring means that the overgrown vacant lot directly behind our house thaws, and the what must be thousands of mice wake up and go on the move. Unfortunately for us, this means that we get new tenants who scramble through our walls and chew goddamn everything.
Unfortunately for them, last season (almost exactly around this time, actually) meant that I had given up on trying to let them live and went on a killing rampage with inexpensive yet very efficient traps.
They have the same MO this year - don't actually eat anything, just leave pellets and dust everywhere and freak us out in the kitchen at 4am. Elsa alerted me to their presence today, and I am so not having any of this. She's frustrated because cabinet mice are different from wall mice in that they are out of her reach, so hunting duties fall to me this time around. Elsa is still on bug-catching patrol, though.
I contacted uDon, and since poison and fumigation are not an option, all I have left are a) kill traps and b) blocking their means of egress. I cleaned and disinfected the shelves and counters tonight, then studied the enemy. There are three places they could be utilizing: a hole in the topmost shelf, a hole in the second-highest shelf, and a ripped out piece of insulation in the windowsill that I've seen them dash into. The first two were blocked with plexiglass, and the last was stuffed with suffocating plastic. I then set traps within inches of each to see how effective my preventative measures were.
We shall see in the morning. No telltale snaps yet; no news is good news.
