Quintuplets

It's been a long time since I've written about mice, mostly because the mice have been absent. This isn't to say that we haven't had other animals to deal with. This spring and summer we had problems with squirrels and a bat. These days, we just take these visitors in stride.

One night in September, my wife woke me up at three o'clock in the morning to tell me that I'd best put out the traps. And sure enough, I heard the sounds of a rodent party in the attic above our head. What followed was a bit out of the ordinary. The first night we caught one mouse - fairly normal. The second night we caught two more. And then the fun started.

Over the next six hours, five baby mice found their way out of the attic and proceeded to wander around, presumably looking for mom and dad. It's one thing to set a trap and let "the machine" do the work. It's another to be the actual executioner. Isn't this one of the reasons why the French invented the guillotine? So we carefully caught each one, showed it to the girls and took it out to a timber pile and let it go. I hope they have a long happy life, far away from our house.

So that means since we took possession of our house on August 30, 2007, we have caught 63 mice. What always puzzles me though, is why we never catch them in the basement and why we never see them in the living quarters of the house. They only seem to live in the attic. That's a long way up for a little mouse.