This picture is the "Um....I've just dropped my toy and it ran behind the dresser" face of my cat Button. Sigh..... It's that time of year when the field mice are moving out of the fields and into the barns, byres, and hen houses. They also, of course, head towards homes. Generally I don't have a problem with them IN the house unless Princess Button brings them in.....! They do of course get in through tiny gaps in the stone walls (if you can fit a pencil through it a mouse can get through). But after a traumatic year when I first moved into the house when it was newly renovated, I think I can safely say I have blocked up every tiny hole within the house so they can't access any of the rooms. Sadly I have to put poison down under the floorboards to try and control the population I can't get to. I hate doing it, but then I think of all the wires that run under the boards that I don't want mice sized teeth on!
I accept I have a cat and she will eat mice. Fine - I just wish she wouldn't bring them in ALIVE! Or givet to me as a present. "Look what I brought you - and when I do this - it runs!" However I've never been afraid of mice - one used to share a stable with my old pony and would sit under his hay net nibbling whatever dropped down. Sweet...and at least it meant he didn't have rats! (Rats and mice won't live together so if you have one you won't have the other. No rats on Graemsay so....). Anyway I digress, I just don't like them IN my house. But I have become quite adept with an old cereal box and a brush in being able to scoop the poor things up when they stop running. I then have to shut Her Highness indoors while I release them and give them at least 15 minutes head start before I release HER!
Anyway - back to the matter in hand.... she let this one go and it went behind the dresser. I got out the humane mouse traps, baited with peanut butter and put them either side of the dresser. I then sat down at the kitchen table to work. Sadly I missed the photo opportunity of the century - the mouse came out the opposite end to Button and jumped OVER the mouse trap! But when I moved for my camera it shot back behind the dresser again....sigh.... anyway I did get *this* picture. Button at one end, while the mouse had just hopped back over the mouse trap on the left and back behind the dresser....
Eventually Button got bored but wasn't going to give up entirely so sat - er - laid on sentry duty. I found this reassuring as I didn't really want a wee mouse running up my leg while I worked away on my laptop!
Eventually though it popped out and right into the humane mouse trap - as you can see it beat Button to it!
I then released it out in the garden while Button was still convinced it was behind the dresser! Just in case there were more there - who knows how many she might have brought in to play with! I replace the humane mouse traps - but nothing else was caught. Phew...! It could be a long winter though.....
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