This morning I woke up with a vengeance!
There’s blood out there and it will be
MINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (evil laugh here)
There are mice in our walls.
It’s no surprise
really. I mean, we bought an 1890’s
farmhouse in rural SE Colorado and it backs up to Mighty Mouse’s Golden Corral
buffet, a farmer’s beautiful almost harvest ready corn field. Well, DUHHHHHH you say to me about mice in
our walls. “You silly city girl, you,”
you utter under your breath at me. It’s
OK, really.
Adding insult to injury I noticed the FIRST evidence of this
yesterday as I was cleaning Mr. Lazy and Mr. Belligerent’s litter boxes. Those two useless felines are actually
allowing the mice to use their elimination facility. Yes, there were mouse droppings in the
box! Oh, no, don’t mind me; I don’t mind
cleaning up the box while you two furry beasts lie around sanctimoniously licking
your rear ends.
Now, being as this is the first pest out here in the wilds
of Bent County that I can’t fill full of lead, however, don’t think I don’t
want to. I need a solution and I need
one fast. Who knows what Mickey and his
free-loading mouse buddies are doing to the interior of my walls. I heard that frat party they were hosting last
night. I think it was any-coin-buys-an-electrical-wire
blow out par-tay! The holier-than-thou
cats were ignoring this. What? What noise in the wall? We only hear the clank of the food being
poured into the bowl. That’s what
happens when you start allowing the “Medicinal Catnip” to be freely dispensed;
the crumbling of a productive, hunting feline society.
I think I understand Bill Murray’s character in Caddy Shack
with the gopher issue.
It started to
drive him crazy. When I Google searched
this information, I started to lose my marbles too with fret:
The gestation period is about 19–21 days, and they give birth
to a litter of 3–14 young (average six to eight). One female can have 5
to 10 litters per year, so the mouse population can increase very
quickly.
Holy crap!
Let’s all do our old-school, NON-Common Core math for a
second. Let’s assume Miss Mouse is
having about 11 babies per birthing event.
Hmmm 11x, let’s just all it about 8 litters per year. Ok, so 11x8=88 in a year’s time. Let’s assume that half of those are females
who get bred soon thereafter.
44x88=3,872
That is more than the entire population of Las Animas in a
year’s time, in the walls of our home. I
am moving to militant mouse removal strategies.
I’ve called upon my like-minded FB friends in rural areas
and so far have learned that peppermint oil soaked cotton balls will work to
chase them away. I’ve learned from many
on line videos from Bob Villa, the original OLD house guy, that I need to seal
cracks around the house and hang plastic owls in the trees along with a ribbon
like material that looks like a snake to a mouse. Yes, prevention is good. I’m concerned about the ones who are already
IN the house.
I expressed my worry to
the cats. They’re indifferent to my
concerns.
See? Do you see any
interest in anything other than a nap?
I’m thinking I should go and busy myself with something else
because my energy to capture the enemy is consuming me and only makes me want
to watch Caddy Shack again.
Here’s the famous dynamite clip that I cannot do in my
rodent irradiation as much as I’d like to.
Carry on!
~Anne Boswell Taylor
#MouseHasToDie
#MouseHasToDie
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