Hmmmm... I know that this has been a pretty crappy year for pretty much every person on the planet, but this is really not a great sight to see at any point in time.
Our little Dutch house is the end house in a row of four houses, so we share a wall and roof with the immediate neighbour. However, due to the way the houses are built, I'm pretty sure that there is a clear path inside the walls and roof to all four of the houses. Too small for humans... but just the right size for mice!
Now, when we first moved into this house nearly five years ago, we made sure to set up a little network of ultrasonic repellers for any potential mouse invaders. I'm not 100% sure if they work or not, but the idea is that the deter newcomers (the sound is supposed to be really annoying!) rather than outright displacing mice that are already nesting in the location.
In our previous rental places, we would have the occasional mouse invader, mostly due to the close quarter living conditions (houses conjoined) and the age of the cities. So, even if you manage to keep your own place free of mice, it is hard to keep the entire neighbourhood clear... so, they will eventually get around, especially if there is construction work going on.
This last year, there HAS been construction work going on near our place... both on buildings and also on the roads. So, it hasn't been too much of a surprise that there have been reports of rats and mice up and down our street. In fact, a colleague who lives a couple of blocks away said that his group of houses got infested by rats! YYYUUUUUCKKKK!!
Thankfully, it appears that we only have a mouse problem at the moment. I found this mouse on our stairwell recently (I found one trapped almost a year ago...)... weirdly enough, it was acting quite strange. Not moving much and then not running away when I saw it. It even was docile enough to be scooped into a bowl so I could throw it out the door! I wonder if it was stunned from falling from a higher level... or if it had been poisoned?
Anyway, after this, we talked with our neighbours, and they said that they had a big mouse problem upstairs in their house! Sigh... of course, that means that it is quite likely that they are going to be coming over into our place as well.
So, it is time to bolster the defences. The repellers have been placed on every level closer to their side of the house, and with one dedicated one for the food storage cellar. Meanwhile, I have also deployed traps in the kitchen and cellar area... and another set in the roof/attic area (where I suspect is where the mouse transfer is happening!). These are decent quality traps (sadly, killing ones not trapping ones...) that I have used in the past... the mouse does NOT get away with the bait! I use crunchy peanut butter as the bait... sticky, so that the mouse has to get right in and crunch around!
On the living level (middle floor), I haven't placed any traps... mostly because it is too tricky to find a place where I'm likely to encounter mice and not little children's fingers.
Anyway, when the mice are trapped or found... I'm the person in the house that will have to deal with them. If it is alive (or dead), my wife freaks out like crazy... although there was that one time she helped me catch one alive in a plastic bag which we then threw out of a second story window! (The mouse was fine, I saw it scuttle away). If it is dead, then the kids are really morbidly curious and want to keep poking it and asking questions about it....
So, another long-term fight on our hands to add to the blackberry work. Slow and steady wins to try and ultimately win the war! Although, I hope that our neighbours are taking the job seriously, or we will be fighting an insurmountable battle!
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