Declaration of war
I quite like mice.
I used to keep one when I was a kid. I called him Nonny. [a Nonny mouse? Geddit?]. He was all white and cute and friendly, up until he died when he ceased to be quite so cute.
When you live in the country then house and garden guests are to be expected. Badgers and foxes stray around outside while inside we have a grand household of spiders, woodlice, beetles and, yes, mice.
Some people see mice as dirty little creatures, and indeed they do have a tendency to poo, but who among us doesn't? It's only nature.
We have a mouse resident at the moment. He has been around for the last few weeks, and provided I remember to put all food away at night then he doesn't really bother me. I presume he buys his food down the village as there is precious little for him to rob here, and there is no sign of any poo so he must go outside for that too. He lives up in the ceiling cavity between the ceiling and the roof. I don't know how the fuck he gets in or out as there is no access whatsoever. I hear him scraping around up there and apart from keeping Penny amused we completely ignore him.
Last night he raided my little stash of packs of baccy.
The little fucker ripped open each pack and spread the contents all over the place. The whole stash was destroyed.
It's all out war now. The little cunt crossed the line so it's him or me. I will show no mercy. I have traps set up all over the place and Penny is to remain starved until he is caught. It's time she earned her keep anyway.
I didn't even know mice smoked?
Like to see a picture of his pipe. Perhaps he's cracked the pipe lighter conundrum!
I don't give a fuck what his pipe looks like so long as he doesn't set the house on fire when lighting it.
Adopt a cat, unless you're allergic of course. One that's known to like dogs and hates mice. Make it indoors only unless you're also allergic to litter boxes. Penny will have a mate, Herself will have a cat to pet (the best therapy when you're not feeling well), the mouse and any relatives thereof will be dead and probably delivered at your feet, and you'll have a constant companion every time you open up your laptop. Cats like to help you write you know.
Just a suggestion of course.
A suggestion that Herself has made too. I have to keep pointing out that Penny seems to have an extra-rational hatred for cats. At night time, if there aren't any in the garden she invents one and chases that. I could only see a future of mayhem if we adopted one. And I don't need that additional help with my writing either.
How to get the little buggers – use breakback traps, but when you load them with Mars Bar or whatever, set them or handle them at all, wear rubber gloves. Mices have very good sense of smell.
I've had good results with bromadiolone poison along with traps (poison shouldn't be used with pets in the house), but, and it's a big smelly but, if the little squeaky twats die in a void in the building, you'll be treated to the decomposing dead mouse revenge smell, and it is very bad indeed if a few of them die at once.
Here's the important bit, once there are no signs of micey activity, keep laying traps for months. Then next year when it gets cold, lay traps again.
I'd put half a dozen traps in the average kitchen and 4 or 5 piles of poison.
Mice are cute, but they piss all the time and dump a lot – in your frying pan and in your tobacco. They love hanging around cookers. Exterminate them all. They are not live and let live creatures.
I'm actually a vegetarian – I got one of these furry bastards once with a mallet so hard its eyes popped out.
Welcome Alan [xxxx]. You seem to be a mouse lover?!
There are now several breakback traps set around the place though I draw the line at using Mars bars. The latter are strictly for my consumption and I refuse to waste them on a mouse. I believe peanut butter is a good substitute and have had some fair successes in the past with that. Peanut butter comes with the advantage that it doesn't go stale immediately, and also I hate the stuff so they can have a full jarfull.
I don't like poison mainly for the reason you mentioned – I don't like the aftermath. The fact that I have an inquisitive dog doesn't help either. I wouldn't want to poison her.
Thank you so much for the graphic detail in the last bit of your comment!
Make yerself some profiteroles stuffed with cream and topped with chocolate and bait the traps with that. Takes the little buggers out nicely, they can't resist. Best thing is the the little sods get their gnashers in it and don't have a chance to taste it. Sadistic, I know, but he did cross the line and deserves all he gets. As a bonus they taste nice and her'll love 'em.
Are you fucking mad?? If I had profiteroles there is no way that I'd waste them on a fucking mouse. I'd be jumping on the trap myself. They can make do with peanut butter or they can fuck off to the neighbours but I'm not wasting good stuff on them.
You didn't know that mice smoked? I'm surprised at you.
For years in anti-smoking labs all over the World, they've been teaching mice to smoke in an effort to discover if smoking does actually do any harm. So far, it seems, they have been unable to induce cancer in a single mouse but the grant money, ahem, research goes on.
I suggest that your mouse is a tourist because from your description, he chewed the tobacco rather than lit it!! He's probably a Swedish mouse I reckon.
I forgot about them. Maybe it was an escapee who liked the experiments so much that he took up smoking? Most mice are under 18 so they would find it hard to buy cigarettes legitimately so he would have to resort to Man with a Van or a bit of burglary?
He obviously chews tobacco, so what you need is a spittoon to law him out
"Law" should read "lure"!
Nah! To "law someone out" is to create an outlaw. Sounds about right to me?