It's been a mousy sort of week. As of yesterday, there's still the faint odor of dead mouse wafting through my classroom. Earlier in the week I discovered that a water bowl that I'd placed in the barn for the ducks to drink out of had four drowned baby mice floating in it. This made me alternately sad and pleased as I carried the bowl to the compost heap and emptied it. On the one hand, I'm thinking, poor little baby mice ("I would have rescued you if I could"). On the other, I'm contemplating putting out another full water bowl in the same place ("Yipee! Four less mice !!!"). Hard not to be just a wee bit schizophrenic around here.
And then, there's been the bad smell emanating from the master bathroom. Thinking that it had to do with my lax housekeeping skills, I scrubbed the toilet in the water closet. Multiple times. It now sparkles beautifully, but the smell only got worse. I suggested to Bruce that gas must somehow be seeping up the pipes from our septic tank and he patiently told me that this was impossible. The smell grew horrific and, in desperation, I poured bleach into the toilet water tank. It's sparkly in there too now, but it still did nothing to get rid of the stench.
Hardly surprising, when the odor was coming from a very ripe mouse that's been steadily decomposing behind the water closet door this whole while. I made this momentous discovery this morning. Feeling a little like Lady Macbeth attacking her damned spot, after removing the body, I scrubbed out all traces of dead rodent with hot water, paper towels and massive amounts of disinfectant. The smell, I'm glad to say, is gone at last.
Country life....
You would think that we would not have mice, given that we have five cats in residence. Alas, no...we have mice in the barn...mice in the garage...mice in the chicken coop...and mice of both the quick and the dead varieties in the house.
ReplyDelete"What of the five felines?" you ask.
Mulligan: Although she will, on occasion, catch a rodent; she prefers birds...as in feathers all over the house. Her largest catch to date is an adult California Quail.
Zelda: May or may not hunt mice...the only things she wants to kill are the other cats...the dogs...and frequently my arm. She is a wee bit bi-polar.
Multi-Pass: AKA Pookie...Miss Gopher Girl. She hunts...nightly...kills gophers but has a bad habit of releasing live mice in the house to play with them...it's the Frogpond Rodent Relocation Program.
Arby: A lover, not a hunter...will occasionally catch something just to prove he's pulling his fair share of mouse patrol.
Max: Professional Assassin. As a former feral feline, he believes in eating what he kills...unfortunately, his focus has recently shifted to tender, tasty quail babies (see Tuesday's blog). He prefers wild game, not our insipid house/barn/domestic mice.
And this is why we can't have nice things....
We do not have a cat to catch mice.Mice do come into the house but only in the autumn,they get into the attic space and set up home.At night you could hear them scampering around above the ceiling overhead,they used to drive me demented.The problem is now solved,we bought an electronic rodent repellant,you just plug it in and it emits a sonic high pitched noise ( undetectable to the human ear and domestic pets ) which drives them out,we have not had a problem since this gadget was installed.
ReplyDeleteThis might be the answer to your very mousy problem,no dead mice in the house so no horrid smells,works on rats as well.
This gadget is not expensive and uses very little electricity,we have ours plugged in all the time,give it a try.
Carolyn.
Carolyn -- you're a genius! I've read of these sonic contraptions, but didn't know if they worked. But they do?!? That's awesome! Mice inside our house are only a sporadic problem, however I teach in an old portable classroom with walls and a ceiling with holes like swiss cheese. Never-ending streams of mice just march right in from the surrounding fields -- there aren't enough traps in the world... Bruce just ordered a four-pack of these sonic gadgets through Amazon. Woot! :)
ReplyDeleteSo glad I could be of help,you are welcome.
DeleteYou might find the odd mouse that comes in but they soon scamper out when the sonic noise gets to them.I was told about this gadget by a friend who uses them in his grain barn to keep the rats at bay.
Let me know how you get on.
Carolyn.