avatarMark Kleimann

Summarize

The Mouse Cemetery

No, I am not a Cruel Person

Photo by Jill Dimond on Unsplash

What drove us to this

In 2018, due to financial constraints, my family and I were forced to sell our home in a large Adelaide Hills town and move to a more affordable, but older home, 17 km away.

It was in a small country town, which had been set up around a mine, which was now closed.

The house had, in its past life, been the town’s general store, and had no shortage of rooms. It also had a large yard, which we intended to convert into an amazing garden and entertainment area.

We moved in with no shortage of optimism, and disregarded the concerned comments from relatives regarding what were we doing moving from our lovely, low-maintenance home to a 70-year old weatherboard house in this quiet small town.

We soon got to work on making this house into our home, removing a weathered, barely safe front deck, planting trees and grassing the large upper yard, to start the long process of making it into our entertainment garden.

As my wife was unable to work due to a back injury, our finances were limited, but we managed to budget successfully, and put money towards the restoration of our new home.

We made friends with neighbours across the road, one of whom supported the Australian Rules Football (AFL) club Carlton. We could often hear his rather vigorous, loud supporting of their matches though their open lounge room window, as he watched them on TV. It was louder during their rare victories.

We also made friends with their neighbours, who were a family with two small children. Their son and our young son soon became close friends. They supported the AFL team the Essendon Bombers, and were not loud supporters, even when their windows were open.

Their family included chickens, rabbits and two cats, one of whom liked to roam around our yard. The mother of this family told us that this cat had a large appetite for mice.

We had been living there for three months when we started hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet on the wooden floorboards of our kitchen and hall, late at night. We also heard them in our food cupboards.

I knew exactly what our visitors were: mice!

The Plan

I had unwittingly been the host to these hungry, uninvited guests at previous places I had lived at over the years, so I was no stranger to their cheeky ways.

In 2003, I moved to a townhouse in the same town in which I now live, and soon heard the nocturnal sounds of these tiny furry visitors.

They were in the space between the floors of the building, in my cupboards and also behind my refrigerator. I was very concerned, especially when I found holes in my breakfast cereal packets and other food boxes.

One became trapped in the tiny space between the wheels on which my refrigerator sat, and this became its final resting place. This presented me with a rather lengthy, gruesome task: lifting my fridge off its wheels, locating its tiny decomposing body and removing it. This involved opening all the downstairs windows (to attempt to remove the smell), removing the corpse and applying many bucketloads of disinfectant to the affected area. Regular spraying of room deodoriser then completed the job.

I then consulted my parents for advice, and they recommended mouse traps, brutal but effective.

Using cheese as bait then led to my guests deciding that I was no longer a friendly host, and moving on to greener (less fatal) pastures.

Photo by Skitterphoto on pexels.com

This then led to the formulation of The Plan…

I used my past rodent experience to try to free ourselves of our unwanted lodgers.

As we were being visited by between 1–3 mice per night, I wondered if a solution would involve poison as well as traps. A Google search soon found that traps were the way to go , as using poison would result in decaying mouse bodies lodged behind our built-in kitchen cupboards, leading to a new fumey problem. It would also be a very inhumane way to let our visitors know that they are not welcome.

We went on a shopping expedition to our nearby hardware store to buy a collection of traps.

Now, where do we place them?

We placed them on the floor, in front of our food cupboards, but with limited success, with peanut butter as bait, as recommended by experts. We then followed the trail of mouse pellets to deep into our cupboards…

The Battle

Photo by Alexas Fotos on pexels.com

Although our tiny guests were cute, we knew that they were potentially carrying diseases and were putting our family at risk.

They were also visiting us in greater numbers.

This meant that we needed to change our battle plan. The number of traps in our kitchen increased, and I changed our trap bait to something sweet. We were having moderate success with the peanut butter, but I replaced this with Nutella and jam, with immediate success.

I found that there were gaps in the wall where the pipes for our sink taps and dishwasher came into the house. I packed these with steel wool, to try to limit access holes for our visitors.

As the fatalities (on their side) mounted, I was presented with an issue: where do we dispose of them without attracting every cat within range?

Thus the Mouse Cemetery was born.

It was in an unassuming patch of ground, next to our small garden shed, and from humble beginnings soon grew to 25 graves. The burials were brief, with the focus soon going back to the battle at hand. We made sure that we gave it a wide berth on nights when the moon was full.

We were determined, and kept up our attacks, with traps set strategically, next to our back door, next to our fridge and in our cupboards. It eventually led to success, although there were some instances in which our furry “friends” got too close for comfort!

One of these occurred one autumn night last year when I was asleep. I woke to find a rustling in our bedclothes, and soon after, something small and furry brushed against my cheek! I switched on the light, and then something small scurried under our bedroom door. Upon opening the door, it was nowhere to be found. The space under the door was then barricaded with anything we could find.

The visits from the critters then decreased, so we thought that our strategy was working. I did notice a strangely familiar odour coming from a large, horizontal gap in the top of our stove, so assumed that one had found its way in there and was unable to climb out.

The conclusion (or The Truce)

The instances of mouse sightings in our home ended up decreasing to the occasional visitor every few weeks.

We knew that they were still about, as our neighbour behind us told us that he regularly had them in his house (every day), and our other neighbour’s mouse-loving cat still paid us regular visits.

We also knew that our “battle plan” of multiple traps, adorned with very tempting bait (Nutella, jam, honey and even chocolate mousse), placed at strategic points along their “highways”, were attracting them.

We have since sold that house (for other reasons, which I will go into at a later time), and have since spoken to our buyer about the mouse issue.

He said that, since replacing the entire kitchen and closing off their access holes (which we couldn’t reach), he hasn’t had any mouse problems.

Have you had mouse problems too? Please let me know!

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