Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Of men and mice - again


I was in the garage at the weekend rummaging around looking for this or that when I came across all my old running race finishers medals. The mice had been at them and all the ribbons were chewed and destroyed. Oh my memories destroyed.

A month or so ago my brother had lent me a battery powered mousetrap that electrocutes mice and rats as the mice seem to have got the hang of the poison and back breaker traps that have been in there the last few years.

The battery powered mousetrap has been in the garage active for about four weeks. In the first week I caught 5 mice (bait of peanut butter and muesli) and the following week anther two. Since then my trap has been bare so I took the initiative this weekend and moved it to the other side of the garage.

Yesterday my trap was again empty, but this morning I had a dead mouse. Mice are not exactly big but this morning’s victim was particularly small.

My brother is threatening to charge me £10.00 for each mouse caught as rental for the device. As the trap is £42.00 on Amazon I think I will return his trap and get one of my own as it will be cheaper than paying his tarriff (or I could just lie about how many it hasn't caught).
 

All this talk about mice has made me paranoid. I was sleeping in the spare bedroom (which also doubles as an office at home) the other night when The Wife was doing her fog horn impression in her sleep as she had a cold. I was woken in the night by a noise which sounded like a mouse moving something. As my son and my wife often eat in this room as well as their bedrooms (against my explicit instructions not to take food into the bedrooms!) it would not surprise me if we had mice upstairs. I got out of bed and turned the lights on and began to move the furniture looking for evidence of mice. No success but I did clean up a number of sweet wrappers, yoghurt pot lids, lollipop sticks and general rubbish from under the desk, bed, bookcase and wardrobe (why do kids not throw things away rather than try to hide elicit food wrappers in obvious places like under the settee or in their sock draw?).

I think that I will be moving all the furniture in that room in the coming week and emptying the garage when the weather eventually warms up.

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