The pied piper

Entry from old blog 7 April 2006

I'm not a huge fan of mice. How could anyone love the mess they leave as they reek havoc throughout your kitchen or the **sarcastic tone** joy of catching the little blighters?

When we moved we brought with us the small aviary that I had bought my hubby for his birthday, which is a smallish 1.5m x 3m job. A couple of months after the move I was talking to the birds when a small movement at the edge of the wire caught my attention. As I stood and watched, a mouse ran from under the planter box next to the cage to get seed that had fallen on the ground. As soon as I moved it ran away.

Not long after, I was wetting the compost bin contents when all of a sudden I saw a mouse running on top of the pile trying to escape the water. My first reaction was to chase it around the inside of the bin with the hose until it was really wet, after which I picked it up by its tail and threw it over the back fence. Hoping that it would hit the ground and run away or get caught by the neighbours cat I was horrified when I heard a small thump. Looking over the fence I could see that the mouse had landed on top of the neighbours rain-water tank, and it was running along the top looking for a way down. It must have been scared witless because it did not take the leap of faith of 2+ metres, but stayed on the top of the tank.

Being such a warm day, I kept watering my vegies, sneaking a peak at the water tank over the fence to see if the mouse had magically disappeared. No such luck. Every time I looked I could see it drenched and shaking sitting in the same spot. Pity struck me, and I knew that if I didn't do something the poor thing would die of heat stroke, so I grabbed one of my tomato support poles and balanced over the fence trying to knock it off the top (all the while hoping that the neighbours wouldn't see me through their kitchen window). I eventually knocked the mouse off, and it ran away as I had originally hoped.

I saw a mouse (it could have been the same one) a few more times in the compost bin, and one time after drenching it I picked it up by the tail and started to look closer at it. It was then that it decided to go for my fingers, so I flicked the mouse away from me. Wrong direction though - this time it went running towards the house, with me bolting behind it trying to divert it away. Successfully too, I might add, as it eventually ran back for the safety of the planter.

A few other things have happened since then, such as baby mice being born, and me witnessing a mouse climbing up the inside wire of the aviary about half a metre off the ground. One mouse got caught in the wire and died, and I was glad that I wasn't the one who had to clean it up (it's not my aviary after all!!) It was after that that we, or should I say, I, decided to get a mouse trap. We caught the first mouse in less than two hours, and overnight caught two mice in the one trap. The next day we caught one with no bait, and another one that night. All up we caught six mice, plus the one that got caught and died, so that's seven less mice to play with our birds.

I haven't set the trap again, and I am kinda worried that the mice will just keep on coming...... (I wouldn't mind so much if I wasn't the one who had to empty the trap!).