invasion

[cellio]

Wednesday afternoon I walked upstairs to find a small (baby?) mouse, dead and intact, laid out in front of the bedroom door. One of the cats was presenting a trophy, it seems.

This morning I found a second small mouse, alive but dazed, scampering around in and around the linen closet. Baldur (!), the cat I thought would be least inclined, took interest. With a few false starts and some luck, I was able to get it into a paper bag so I could take it outside.

Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence. I sure hope we don't get to enemy action. (I did inspect the linen closet afterwards and didn't find any more, or any evidence of nesting. But they could be anywhere, right?)

Comments

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

I did inspect the linen closet afterwards and didn't find any more, or any evidence of nesting. But they could be anywhere, right?

Yes, they could be anywhere. Famously, my mother once pulled a handbag out of storage (it was hanging on a hook in the back of her closet) and discovered a mouse nest in it, complete with tiny adorable baby mice).

[cellio]

Wow, I wonder how they got in there. (Can mice climb? I guess so!)

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

The house I grew up in is over a century old. We had a permanent mouse presence. Usual hallmarks were caches of dry dog food in random places (inside seldom-used cookware in floor-level cabinets; in boxes in the attic; in cardboard boxes in the basement; etc) and skittering noises in the (plaster and lath) walls. If you do end up setting traps, we found that peanut butter and half-jellybeans both made far better mouse bait than the stereotypical cheese.

[cellio]

Thanks for the tips. I'd heard of peanut butter being used, but jellybeans are new to me (and might be less messy).

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Go mighty hunting cats!

[cellio]

A truly mighty hunter would have consumed the prey. :-) (Though if they're not going to eat all of it, I'd rather they leave me one intact thing to throw out.)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

But they're trying to feed you because they love you! That's why they saved you the tender young ones.

[cellio]

Oh. I see. :-)

[rectangularcat]

Tiny mice could be shrews - were their noses pointy? Apparently shrews taste horrid compared to mice so cats don't eat them.

[cellio]

I hadn't considered that; thanks. I did not look very closely at the dead one, and my focus on the live one was more on herding than on inspection. But since you mentioned it I asked Google what shrews look like, and it could have been that. The "profile" (from above) was more teardrop-shaped than I think is typical for a mouse (I mean the whole body, not just the head). I'd guess the body was about 1.5 to 2 inches long.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

There can be such a thing as one mouse. There is never such a thing as only two mice. Mice do not exist in the dual; only in the singular or plural.

[cellio]

Then let's hope that this was one mouse... followed a couple days later by one mouse. :-)