Mouse in the House

/ J. F. Riordan

We live in the country. So, when the temperatures dipped into the teens this week, of course, that brought an influx of mice.

Mice are a houseowner’s horror. They are destructive, filthy, and carry disease. But—and I know how this sounds—I cannot bring myself to kill them. I see their big black eyes, and their tiny feet, and they are so frightened and vulnerable. They are like very tiny puppies.

By the way, did you know that mice sing to one another?

So I buy humane traps, bait them with the dogs’ freeze-dried liver treats, and early each morning load my catch into the car and drive out to a cornfield a little more than three miles away. It must be three miles, because, apparently, mice can find their way back over any smaller distance.

Yesterday I caught three. My 13 year old grandson willingly accompanies me because we stop for a doughnut afterward, and he then gets a ride to school. It’s a bit of an adventure.

Last night I set three regular traps, and something new: a bucket trap, with a little ramp and a trap door. I filled the bucket with dried leaves for a soft landing, and smeared the top with peanut butter with dog treats stuck into it. Although I can’t be sure whether anyone is in there this morning, there is a hole in the center of the leaves which suggests there might be. I’ll know when we get to the cornfield. When I dump out the bucket I will be sorry to lose the cache I’ve saved of dry leaves for soft mouse landings, but it can’t be helped.

I don’t know whether the farmer has noticed a car stopping by his field in the early mornings, but it’s a nice field, with corn stubble and lots of kernels scattered in a mouse-friendly way. I have some minor concerns about whether the mice are too cold, but I am doing my part. They are on their own now.

Godspeed, mousies. Don’t come back.

77 thoughts on “Mouse in the House”

  3. Aw, I have the same problem. Rarely, the little critters get into the house, but with five cats, they meet an untimely death before we can rescue them. I leave them alone in the garage because we don’t get nearly as many as we used to. Sometimes I leave them tiny pieces of bird seed or suet cake, and a few times I left a little bowl of water when the temperature was really hot outside. We now have four foxes and an owl in the woods in the back of our house, so I think some of the little guys are getting eaten by predators, which I prefer to poisoning or trapping. And, unfortunately, our neighbor uses a pest control company (I found a poison trap on our side of the property, threw it away) so they may be getting killed in those traps. I used to do trap and release and once opened a trap and found several little terrified guys staring at me. There was no way I could kill them and cannot understand how anyone could kill them. I read that the mice usually don’t survive after release but I believe there’s always some hope that they may survive. In any case, I also refuse to kill them and applaud you for doing your best to rescue them.

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    • Well, they are at the bottom of the food chain, which is not a great place to be. The thing that worries me about poison—among other things—is that a poisoned mouse can then poison a raptor, or even a small cat.
      And yes, those little faces.

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