STAYING VIGILANT IN THE GREAT RODENT WAR

November

I love my new dishwasher. It’s such a joy to put clean dishes in the cupboard. They not only look clean but they feel clean. I am confident that they ARE clean.

Nevertheless, this past week I felt that something else was off in my kitchen. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but my senses were on alert. I checked under the sink. I looked in the pantry. I pulled out the drawer under the stove. And I kept thinking that I should put away the bread on the counter. And then I’d wander off and forget about it . . .

. . . until Friday morning, that is. “WHAT’S THIS?” I screamed before I became speechless in utter horror.

It looked like a pile of granola but the texture was moist. Mike admitted to having spilled there but said he thought he had cleaned it up. This pile was too large to have been overlooked. “Let me smell it,” said Mike. (I wasn’t going to get that close to it.) “It smells like bread.”

That’s because it WAS bread, and of course, we knew this was the doing of the mice. At first glance, the loaf of bread appeared to be untouched, but when I turned it over, I saw that the mice had gnawed a hole in the sack and proceeded to shred the bread. And now that I think about it, the bread was “nut and grain.” I think they shredded out the bread in the effort to find the nuts. (They are a trifle cagey so you have to learn to think like they do.)

Winter weather day -- the snow won't last

I found the traps and the bait. Mike set up the traps, leaving two on the counter, one under the sink, one around the corner in the living room, and one in the pantry. Saturday morning we found mice in both traps on the counter, and it evidently happened soon after we went to bed. It was just a given that they would return to that spot. Mike identified them as one of each sex. A mating pair? That could mean more bad news. However, we did not see more mice today.

Where did they get in? Will we have more? Is there a nest? We don’t know the answers, but it’s clear that we mustn’t assume we have won the war. We must remain vigilant. I know they’re lurking somewhere, waiting until I’ve dropped my guard, waiting until I’m in bed to invade my supplies. Yes, they’re lurking.

November Display -- Thanksgiving at Grandma's

And the other thing is the spiders. I’ve killed two a day for a week. I’ve always heard that spiders are more apparent in the house when cold weather is coming. It’s predicted, especially in the upper country. On this gray day it’s spitting snow in the valley. KW