Building a Better Mouse Trap: Let them build it themselves!

Apparently, we have a rodent problem.  I know, that sounds bad, but it's not terrible.  Yet.  Terrible is when they break into your house and start rodent races through the walls all night and pee all through your insulation.  That is not the kind of problem we have, but I don't want to tempt fate.

You see, the children (and the adults) around here have fallen in love with feeding the birds.  Three years after setting up our awesome squirrel-proof bird feeder, we are entertained year-round by birds:  red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, orioles, gold and purple finches, eastern bluebirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, nuthatches and chickadees and dark-eyed juncos, just to name a few.  And feeding these ravenous hoards requires keeping a stash of thistle seeds, black oil sunflower seeds, and suet.  

Until this year, our system has worked flawlessly.  20lbs bags of seed get stored in our big picnic cooler while a smaller, covered tupperware container holds a portable amount of seed and a scoop.  All of this has a home in our garage as we are pressed for space inside and didn't want to take a chance with the kids getting into it and spreading seeds all over the house.  Anyway, it worked.  While chipmunks scurried through the garage from front yard to back yard every year, the seed went unmolested.

But something was about to change all that:  mice.  Last weekend I decided to try to start up our mosquito magnet.  When I opened the Mosquito Magnet Supply Drawer in the garage (those things work but they are more high-maintenance than a tempermental high school girlfriend) I discovered that something had chewed holes in the bags and left tiny little rodent droppings in the drawer.  Lovely. Made a mental note to wash my hands twice and clean out the turds. 

Then, two nights ago I opened the back door to close the garage before bed, just in time to see a tiny white (white??) rodent scurry across the top of the door track and disappear into the overhead shelves.  A field mouse.  Having encountered plenty of them while living in Kentucky there was no doubt in m mind. The garage had mice.

This afternoon as I headed out to take the Subaru for an oil change I discovered the worst evidence yet:  tiny blue plastic shavings littered the walkway near the seed shelves.  Blue plastic shavings that were an exact match for the cover of the portable seed container's cover.  Sure enough, the little stinkers had chewed off the handle on the top and then, once they could get their teeth in it, they had methodically chewed a mouse-sized hole in the top and climbed in to gorge themselves.  Nice.

Annoyed, I transferred all the seed to new containers and put ALL the containers inside the big cooler.  I vacuumed up the mess and threw out the chewed top.  Threw it out, that was, until I got a fiendish thought.  The mice had been able to get in and out easily when the container was full of seed, but what if it was almost empty?  It's tall, and smooth-sided...they could get in, but could they get back out?

There's only one way to find out.  Feeling slightly evil, I spread the bottom with their favorite selection of seeds, and replaced the cover.  I put the container in what I hope is and easy-to-reach spot not far from the drawer full of mice turds.  And now we wait.  Of course, with three animal-loving tykes in the house there's no way we're going to kill any mice we catch, but they will get relocated far away from here to some cozy wooded area to live out the rest of their days with the owls.  

I don't know.  They're clever, and tomorrow and the next day we'll probably wake disappointed to find an empty bucket with a sprinkling of seeds.  Or, we may find evidence of a super mouse:  one who somehow managed to defy gravity to steal seeds without getting caught.  But I can't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll climb in and get stuck.  How sweet it would be to evict them all, one at a time, each caught in a trap they built with their own teeth.

Comments

[Michelle]

LOVE this post. I just love reading what you write...it makes me smile!

[LeahP]

Thanks, Michelle!