Casa de la Rodentia

Ok, so I don't speak Spanish, Italian or Latin, which means that any of you who do, will recognize the title as a language mish mosh. But doesn't it sound cool?

Thursday I was sitting at the dining room table, going through some papers for taxes when I heard something loud behind me. And it was big. I turned around and looked outside to see if the thing scrabbling around was actually outside on the brick. It sounded at least as big as a squirrel, and maybe even a raccoon. I saw nothing, so putting my ear to the wall, I was just in time to hear something skitter and then slide to the floor inside the wall. It may have been my imagination but I thought there was a bit of panic in that sliding sound.

This is not the first time that we've heard noises in the walls of the house. In fact we have a permanent "guest" on the west wall of the office who wakes up every night around 9:00 pm and skitters around a bit. And then he's back to sleep. We haven't named him yet, but we probably should. He's been with us all winter, maybe longer. We suspect he's a bat, based on previous sightings outside.

Thursday's skittering was different. It had an ominous tone to it (Perhaps I need to stop reading so much Lovecraft). So Friday, I dusted off the six traps we have and reset them. I put three in the basement, two in the attic and the live trap in the attic as well.

Saturday I checked the traps not expecting to find anything. I was shocked to see two large brown mice in two of the attic traps. That means guests 46 and 47 have checked out of Casa de la Rodentia. I made sure to show them to our eldest daughter, who is four and a half. We were able to have a conversation about vermin, health issues and the food chain. All of our mice are kindly "escorted" to the back woods where something disposes of the bodies. As we don't use poison, I feel pretty good about this.

I checked the traps on Sunday too, but found nothing. We'll see what's waiting for me when I get home tonight.