Mouse Rave

Normally, my house is plagued by ants. At one point, two years ago, I have had to call in exterminators to lay out potent poison to kill the ants. While the ants make a comeback from time to time (and get sprayed with limongrass oil in return), they are not has bad as they were two years back.

A new kind of house invasion has come about. I have discovered — by the strange noises in my kitchen wall behind the sink during the past week, and by tiny black grains on my counter and in my silverware drawers — that I have mice.

Madre was plagued with mice early this year; now it is my turn. First, I got rid of the mouse crap on the counter and in the utensil drawers. (There was crap under the sink, but I decided to leave it until I caught the mice.) I washed off the dish drainer, the utensils and the organizers that held them; rinsed them with water and a little bleach; and put them in the higher cabinets, which the mice canot reach. Then I set up a mouse trap under the sink and closed off the doors with duct tape. Finally, I got some square dowels and worked to seal the gap between the counter and the sink cabinet, which is big enough for a mouse to squeeze through.

The trap has caught a small black mouse. I have released it in the grass along a country road near town. After that I flushed out the trap (it was a political statement) and redeployed it under the sink.

The bigger problem is that there is an opening between the sink cabinet and the crawlspace. This lets in both ants and mice from the outside. I intend to seal that off.

On a different topic, the fall semester of the university were I work begins tomorrow, and the printers and Macs are ready. Meanwhile, a new copier/printer has come for testing. I have volunteered to help test the device because our current stock of public printers is aging — their parts have become scarce — and someday will be replaced with new printers.