Monday, July 21, 2008

Mouse of the Mountains

We had a small mouse problem last week. I cornered one of the little fellas behind the piano, and after a thrilling chase, caught him in a towel. This is a technique I developed for removing bees from the house - they are taken to an open door/window and released to fly away. The mouse was taken to an open door and surprisingly did not fly - just sort of arced through the air and went =fap= on the ground then ran away.

It occurred to me then that he might come back. Next time, I would be decisive, and take the mouse at least to beyond the end of the bus route. Elf had invested in a MiceDevice©, a painless trap that encapsulates the varmint in clear plastic. A few days later Marcus spotted a mouse in the boys' room, just as we were heading out the door for school. We popped the Device in the room (as well as conventional kill-the-mouse trap) and shut the door.

When Marcus and I got home that afternoon, a different mouse was inside the Device. He had eaten most of the peanut butter and sultanas and looked a bit bored. He had also eaten the bait in the kill-the-mouse trap, and walked away - a lucky and deft rodent. The three of us got in the car and went for a nice drive in the afternoon sunshine, up Mt Wellington as far as The Springs. The mouse sat on Marcus' lap. We walked him some way up the Organ Pipes track to reduce the chance of a road accident. Marcus opened the Device and he scampered off into the snow-dotted undergrowth, without a backward glance.

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