For a week or two, no field mice came to the peanut butter-and-birdseed buffet/feeding station in our basement “storage” room. The main dining area (for mice) is located inside a metal, industrial-sized Have-A-Heart trip which looks not unlike a miniature Walpole State Prison. Ye Olde Husband purchased this contraption after we discovered that one smarty mouse was able to chew emergency “exit windows” in the small plastic Have-A- Heart traps, enabling her to, well, eat and run.
After having trapped and relocated six or so of these big-eyed, big-eared cuties, we were confident that at least one mouse family had been successfully, but gently evicted.
But yet another splendid little brown mouse appeared in the trap yesterday morning. I was going to take her to the woods behind the house, but got a good look at her tiny, pinkish star-shaped paws.
Thinking about the impending blizzard, I almost brought her back in the house. However, I am not quite that crazy – and do not appreciate having little mouse turds in the cabinets. In the end I brought her to Ye Olde Husband’s unused, overgrown mini-greenhouse in the backyard, built in a panic about Growing Our Own Food several years ago. (Somehow this structure never resulted in us growing our own food, although the project enabled him to escape the house, sometimes for long periods, when we had a wailing newborn.)
I unlocked the greenhouse and noted that it was pleasantly warm inside, and that the grass had grown up to foot-tall, dried hay. The mouse, when I opened the trap, appeared to dive gratefully in, and was so well camouflaged that she almost vanished from sight.
Today, with the wind blowing and everything cushioned heavily in white, I suspect that she wisely stayed inside, and is busy, digging and nibbling on seeds. And maybe, she peers through the plastic walls now and then, looking for me …
The Spectator of Amherst. 