A mouse in the house

bye.

I lived on a farm for a few years growing up and we had a major rat problem. For the first few nights, I sat up in bed wide-eyed as I watched them run across the far wall.

I am rambling - sorry - but yes, really, do get a rat or two!

I've been keeping food wrapped, but still sometimes it'll eat into the bread bag.

As for ants which we tend to get in the summer, I'm a believer in white vinegar... spray it where you think they come in... they won't. Has to be redone every few days to a week, but I like having vinegar around a lot more than poison.

We had a pet rat once - a lab rat we name Malty. He was pretty. Beige & cream colored.

Anyway, I think that rats, by their very nature, will try to keep themselves scentless so as to be harder to scent by predators.

Funniest rat story - my mother was having a dinner party. My rat thought the food smelled good and opened her cage door, crept down the hallway, and then up onto the tabletop (likely scaling the tableleg and then the table cloth). Once on the table she saw someone holding a piece of garlic bread - and went running toward the bread - she grabbed it and continued running down the length of the table until she reached then end, where she launched herself into space and ran back down the hallway and into my bedroom. Needless to day, the dinner party ended rather soon after that, with lots of fairly full plates and plenty of leftovers.

Names of my rats:
Ratfina
Josephine/Little Jo
Portia (the coolest!)
Cocoa
Sage
Pepper (current psycho rat - never gentled down - I wanted to name her "blitzkreig" as she leaps and bites unexpectedly, and has a lightening strike mark on her belly)

So you were naked in a bathtub with a rat swimming around? I'm not sure how this makes me feel.

am curious to hear more about this high-pitched rat phear machine. tell me more!!

If you're worried about mice, set up a trap, and if you catch one, set it up again. If you haven't caught one after a week or so, you're probably okay.

We're too wussy to actually know how to deal with this type of situation, so we've just called out pest control to kill the bastard(s). It's a shame, though, as it's actually kind of cute in a fuzzy unhygienic vermin type way.

This is made even worse by the fact that it's just one in a long line of things that are going wrong for me at the moment, compounding the lack of money/breaking up with long-term boyfriend/about to become homeless situation (yes, I guess if we're about to leave then really we should just let the mouse live, but I'm not staying for another month in a place that is infested).

Bah.

fuck just a month ago i'm getting frustrated cos possums are fucking in our ceiling (ever heard possums fuck? its all screeching and running around and hissing - bad b&d) and i got up to move to another room and i'm about to go into the kitchen and in the half light of 2am i spy this fucking rat on the kitchen floor!!! so i creep back out and get a spade and creep back up behind the fucka and WHACK WHACK WHACK. blood and guts everywhere.

i figure he was stoned on the rat bait cos he never moved too fast.

It must say something terrible about me that when I read this exchange I initially assumed you were discussing a Big Brother contestant's opinion on such matters.

I couldn't bring myself to kill them, particularly not in such a blood'n'guts way - I think I have as much of a problem with dealing with the lifeless body of one as I do with a scurrying scampering one. So, ha, I make someone else do my dirty work for me.

they used to run around in the attic and the first night it happened it sounded like someone was walking around upstairs, very fucking scary.

fuck ronan they sound like BIG rats!

it's funny actually we had to change the setting on it because me and my brother (but not my parents) could hear its barely audible high pitched whirring all around the house.

When I first moved to Denver I was startled by a mouse ambling slowly out into the middle of my empty living room, but more because of the sudden realization that I wasn't alone. It tried to hide in a pile of curtains but I caught it in a shoebox and put it outside. I never saw another one in that apartment. I figured it was lost because in other houses I've lived in that were genuinely infested, the mice would stick to the walls or hidden spots and scurry very quickly, not just stroll out into the middle of rooms.

The mouse left of it's own accord, probably to squeak to all his mousemates about the idiot human who watched too many cartoons.

wow. for a horrible minute i thought my mate jon's electric mousetrap (as discussed, oddly enough, at the glasgow FAP on tuesday) had passed into popular existence.

this is how it worked (or didn't):

- you chop the electrical flex off something, eg a kettle
- you tape the neutral wire to a piece of tinfoil
- you tape the live wire to another piece of tinfoil
- you place the two bits of tinfoil on the floor, near enough that a mouse walking across them would complete the circuit
- you plug this death-trap contraption into the mains
- there's a bang and all your lights go out

mind you: he was driven to desperate measures after finding a mouse in his toaster one morning. after he'd turned the toaster on.

Im wondering about the ethics of mouse traps but just want the buggers OUT. Il try the sonar thing however other (possibly more scientific) posts on the internet indicate they dont actually work at all. But its worth the try...

We just put ALL foods in the fridge or in tupperware or metal containers, and they disappeared on their own after a couple of weeks. Also used some of the steel wool to close up spaces under the sink but I don't think that's what drove them out, there were still openings for the determined rodent. Can only assume they found their way in by accident and out just the same.

'Course, one of the dangers of using poison (besides that it's a slow, cruel death) is that mice have a tendency to expire under your floors & behind your walls, and then DECOMPOSE and SMELL.

They eventually got rid of the rats and used the pellet gun to shoot at tins of baked beans.

We have two cats and two dogs in our house and consequently do not have mice or rats, ever.

Uh, we have (or rather had) two dogs and also a mouse. I remember my mother seeing the mouse and saying:"He stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked at me with an expression of total arrogance. He then proceeded to crawl under the cupboard." hahahaha

I love cats, but my Other Half does not. I'd been on at him for ages, saying how much I'd like to have a cat (or two), but he was always staunchy opposed to them, until the night of THE MOUSE INCIDENT several years ago.

I awoke in the middle of the night, to the sound of something gnawing furiously on the skirting board in the bedroom. Every time I flicked the bedroom light on - there was nothing there. It was baffling. I thought I was going mad.

The constant light-flicking-on-and-off plus me-grumbling-noises woke my Bloke up, "There's a mouse in here! Do something! I can't sleep with that in here! What if if runs up onto the bed and bites me?! Get rid of it!" I wailed.

"Well", he muttered, "there's a mousetrap down in the garden shed, but I'm not going out there at this time of night"

"Do something else then! Anything! Just get rid of it!" I pleaded

"What do you expect me to do? Shoot it?" He was becoming quite bad tempered.

"Yes, if you must"

"Okay then, I will"

And so he rummaged in the wardrobe and pulled out a .22 air rifle and a box of pellets. I held the torch. We laid down, side by side, army commando style, on our stomachs, sideways across the bed, peering into the darkness at the section of skirting board where I had heard the mouse sounds. We pulled the duvet over us as camouflage, because The Bloke said that mice can see in the dark and would be able to spot the gun. I believed this. It seemed feasible.

"Right". he whispered. "Point the torch towards the corner where the gnawing was, and as soon as you hear it, switch the torch on and I'll shoot the little fucker - okay?"

The torch was one of those huge Maglites, regulation Police issue with an intense halogen beam. I think they use them to illuminate whole streets from the police helicopter.

The gnawing started up again, I switched on the torch, which instantly dazzled The Bloke who fired blindly in the general direction of the door. We did this sniper exercise several times, air gun pellets ricochetting off the walls, the wardrobes, the bedside clock. Everywhere, except the vicinity of the mouse.

Next day, he capitulated and said I could have a cat.

The cat's the most prolific hunter, and we've never had any mice in the house (or had to shoot any more furniture) since.

hm i guess bats are best appreciated from a distance. when u see them flapping around at dusk in spring & summer they seem like lovely little sky mice!

how'd you get to meet multiple bats, jimbeaux? if i put a bug lamp outside my window will it draw spooky bat friends to me during the appropriate seasons? why are bats associated with autumn and bare trees if i only see them when it's warm out? ~bat mysteries~

One of the cats brought one in the house one time. We had to cover it with a wastebasket and kind of shuffle it out of the house.

Another one was lying on its back the brick wall outside our garage. I thought it was dead. To my surprise, when I nudged it with a stick it kind of flapped around and hissed. I guess cold weather can make them sluggish, so sluggish they can't fly.

that is pretty cool! pls hi5 yr cat for me

did you tenderly nurse the chill bat back to warmth, and did it then grant you 3 wishes or come back later to help you out of a jambeaux? wish i cld find a bat

I did not want to go anywhere near that bat. It was creepy af, especially the way it hissed.

u lost out bro bats have mad magical properties probably

I've always thought it would be cool to have vampire powers.

vamp stylee is perennial for sure. imagine going around with a lil bat dangling from your earlobe, you would be the baddest mfer!

oh shoot i just had a great idea for earrings

🚨2 of the suspects have been apprehended 🚨

https://i.imgur.com/sW5TN9e.jpg

above: le garçon du fromage
below: benevolent despot

they frolic with the goats now. shameless beastlings! how dare they look up at me all cute and helpless with their shiny eyes and delicate ears!

One ran out of my bathroom the other morning. I tracked it down and smashed it with a small bookshelf I had handy

As one does.

dang did a mouse like murder your whole family or something

how u smash things with a bookshelf

a bookshelf fell on me one time when i was sleeping, i was quite startled

cat I just bought two of those green traps on your recommendation, but I haven't had any recent visitors to test them out on

what ya gotta do, see, is rub cheese over your entire house so the neighborhood mice know where the party's at

but seriously, good luck Andy! hopefully you won't get any more visitors but if you do, may they blithely waltz in2 their guest quarters with a minimum of dallying/poop.

Benevolent Despot doesn't look so benevolent.

tim scurry finally had enough of my nonsense babytalk

https://i.imgur.com/mXlFWOS.mp4

moose & mousse & mathilde have all 3 gone to live at the cow shed by the creek, where i wish them many happy moons.

but why, one begins to wonder. why try to hold back the mousy tide? i could start a circus. i could start a mouse zoo & charge people admission. when it's cold out why not sleep under a heaving blanket of mice. perhaps this is how stockholm syndrome begins.

oh happy day, i've been blessed with a visitor 🐭 welcome little friend, hope you like peanut butter! 🥜🥜🧈

they'll piss in your pantry and eat your grape-nuts, get him out of there

do not listen to grasshopper, listen to me

start a mouse farm

swim in mouses

profit

i'm housesitting across town for the summer again, leaving mr. cat to his own messy devices, which in short order = more mices

he's caught a half dozen or so since i've been away 😑

Lemme come over, I’ll bring my little bookshelf and have a fuckin’ stake out

sorry, i can't hear you over the pitter-patter of little feet ♥️♥️♥️

calstars mousebane, slayer of rodents, wielding their dread bookshelf for the glory of lord orkin!

anyway here's gerald jr. from last week

https://i.imgur.com/TVyPK96.mp4

o hai 💗

i always thought if i received a little visitor i'd call him Gerald but i'm liking Amos.

o dag Amos is a gr8 mouse name

yeah, cause Amo(u)s(e) 😍
pairs well with my first name too, i didn't even think of that.

adorable mouse alert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDPzQ42kws

<3

in defiance of the warnings of my youth, i have given cookies to mice.

a new brood has appeared so i busted out our wee guesthouses and slathered the far interiors with peanut butter + parmesan, but the very first night we had any takers the weather decided to snow!! intolerable. it's bad enough i'm exiling them from their home; kicking them out to make their way through the freezing streets like fuzzy little matchgirls is too much.

(or, idk, freezing could be a more merciful end than most mice meet? i feel obliged to give them some chance at life. wish i could offer them a haven but there isn't any way afaics? they're sociable, so can't be kept in isolation, but if kept in groups they'll breed themselves to ruin! plus our lease probably says something about not harboring vermin or whatnot)

right so anyway. the temps rise tomorrow and sally & sue are tucked in their adjoining capsule apartments for the night. i'll not have it said on mousebnb that i am an ungracious host, so in addition to the peanut pâté & fromage i have slipped them each wisps of apple and pea-sized chunks of a cookie that expired last year, which they both set to busily nibbling at once.

poor pitiful morsels, they're free now. sally leapt forth the moment i lifted the doors but sensible sue preferred to stay put and needed a few minutes of whispered encouragement before darting away (around and behind me, opposite the direction of her companion & my scatter of fancy granola, oh well). if they follow the smell of the goats they should find food and shelter. also i knelt in deer crap.

Karmic payback for helping the little monsters

well maybe i enjoy kneeling in deer crap, did you ever think of that mr. mouse murderer! maybe i did it on purpose! maybe i'm bragging about it and you're just jealous that you don't have any nice mushy deer crap to kneel on!!!!!!!

that's quite the feast! i keep peanuts and sesame seeds on hand for smol visitors but cookies are a special treat! you were so sweet to put them up and give them a fighting chance, it's what we all would want <3

this hero built them a village on his property
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-TDyQ7K5O8

Deflatormouse in the deflatorHAUS

subscribing to george mouse w/ very much passionate commitment, thanking u & parrying thus:

https://recordart.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/ricotta-shopfront.jpg

amazing, where did you find that?!

kisses incoming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBQTHRLLn7U

hamster kisses >>>>>>>>>>>> hipster kisses

once i started watching tiny mouse house videos the algorithm suggested one on ANONYMOUSE and a new passion was kindled! the cover story is they're an anonymous collective of artists who install exquisite mouse-sized shops/bistros/hotels throughout (usually) sweden, but imho this is clearly the work of fairies

https://100bookseverychildshouldreadbeforegrowingup.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/1_vn3xaog1tm8ol_mbmxn5mw.jpg

^from the indian in the cupboard?

uh ANONYMOUSE rules, holy cow 🐄♥️♥️♥️

clearly the work of fairies

otm

endpapers of the edn of “the borrowers” that i had as a kid