About a month or two ago we heard some nibbling under the stove area. We had said on facebook that we thought it was a mouse, then decided it must have been a carpenter bee and didn’t think much more about it. Months go by and… it was a mouse. Hearing the chewing again in the stove, I opened it up to see a large fat mouse fearlessly snacking on burnt veggies that had fallen in the stove. So shocked that he just sat there eating while I watched, Susa took the opportunity to grab him and take off towards the back room. I caught her and yelled “Drop it!!”, which she did. My vague plan was then to grab it before it ran away again, but I didn’t really want to get bit. Before we could get some paper towel to grab him with, he was in the back room and down the side of the back cabinets, which as we found, is just another passage way into the long area behind the wall he has been living in (almost the length of the trailer). We weren’t sure about his condition after Susa got him but since she’s never caught or even seen a mouse before, I assumed from past cat experience that she hadn’t really chomped down. I put out some nuts the next day to see if he/she was still around, had died or left the trailer. I put down 18 peanuts (halved/salted) thinking I could just count them if he took one, and hours later, all of them were gone. So either that one mouse made several trips in short time, or he has friends. I spend the evening cleaning up inside all the cabinets and spraying lysol on everything, making sure that no mouse urine or dropping remained in the places I could access (which was most aside from under/behind the stove) and especially making sure there was no more crumbs in the stove. I had vaguely been looking for droppings before, especially when my skittles bag was mysteriously thrashed in a kitchen drawer but saw nothing at the time but suddenly I could see them everywhere…it was.. gross.

I have had horrible allergies for a few months now, particularly my eyes, unable to wear by contacts and sometimes unable to go outside without sunglasses (which makes it hard when I can’t wear contacts with them aka, I can’t see anything).This isn’t normal for my allergies which are usually just a runny nose and the last time we were sick was about 3 weeks longer than it should have been. I’m starting to suspect that what has been causing all this trouble is the mouse/mice urine – a smell we may have overlooked with a cat box, old farty dog and indoor toilet (not saying it stinks in here but there are some moments..). As much as I love mice and rats, I think id rather be healthy than share my living space with them. In a cage I can clean up after them but in the house, they are just filling my breathing air with foulness.

Our mouse has friends.

Ross went out this morning during a random burst of rain to cover my motorcycle and saw a small mouse on the mat outside. He described it as very small, not like the one I had seen in the stove, but odd that it was just out there hanging out. When we went to work outside later in the morning like he always does, the same mouse came right up to his foot before scurrying back under the trailer. Over the next hour he saw it a few more times, standing under the stove area where the mice likely got into the trailer in the first place, looking confused as though it was trying to find a way back in. I wen’t out to look for it once and came back in, minutes later it was back hiding under one of the gas tanks we keep under the trailer. I got down on my stomach and looked carefully under the tank, expecting no luck of course. It wasn’t the mouse I had seen and Susa had traumatized, but a one or two week old baby mouse who could barely walk with coordination let alone run away. He must have fallen out or been thrown out of the trailer due to the new regulations and lack of crumbs in the trailer. (The hope was that they would leave the way they came, not starve, so we’re getting a live trap this week sometime.) If we didn’t know about our mouse problems already, it would have been even stranger to see a baby mouse wandering around under the trailer but as it is, it seemed perfectly reasonable.

I easily caught him and Ross ran inside to find a container for him. It wasn’t that we wanted him back in the trailer, he is just way too young to live outside on his own just yet. Me and Ross are both previous rat/mouse owners and can’t really see just kicking him to the curb unprepared. He’s barely weened and already thin.. just too sad. So… temporary pet it is – till he can run from danger at least. At least it’s not like raising baby squirrels, which is a long drawn out process and huge pain. I think in a week or so he’ll be ready to go. We are calling him Trevor.

I’ll take mice over Roaches any day. If we’re lucky, the mice have been eating the roaches because we haven’t seen any all summer (last summer there were plenty) so that will be one negative of getting rid of the mice, in will come the roaches.

Trevor the mouse

No pictures please, trying to sleep here…

p.s. We are not typically wildlife kidnappers but this guy is kind of our fault in a way…In a “we were a seemingly good place to setup and start a family for a couple of field mice” way.