Mouse guests

The weather gets cold, the mice move in. 

Everyone here seems to have had mice in residence at some time or another - it doesn't matter how old or new the house is. 

Anyway, the other day we caught a biggish mouse and moved him out.  The next day the babies appeared.  The Man found two of them in the sink, curled up together in the plughole. 

So cute.  Vermin, but...so cute.

I got them out - they were scared and shivery - and put them in a box.  As soon as the Boy saw them, he named them (he's a dodgy speller, maybe he mistook pests for pets?).  So then in the box we had Nibbles and Crunch.

Well, once you know your guests' names it seems rather inhospitable not to give them a bite to eat - so I gave them a bit of cookie.  And a bottletop filled with water, because the cookie was rather dry.  And a dollop of peanut butter, and some tissue-paper to build a nest in until I could remove them to a new home...

There they were in the lap of luxury, and bloomin' Crunch just says, "Thanks for the cookie!" and hightails it out of the box and under the cooker.

Hmph.  So much for hospitality.  When I then noticed another mouse in the sink (it had been hiding out, daringly, in the waste disposal) I caught it in a humane trap.  And even though the Man (this time) named that one, too, (Cranberry Juice, aka C.J.), I didn't get so soft on it. 

C.J. and Nibbles took a trip in the car and live elsewhere now.  Crunch plus one other were caught the next day and have also been evicted.  There seems to be one very lightweight mouse left (it has somehow managed to take the peanut butter bait without tripping the balance-activated trap) but it can only be a matter of time before he tips the scales and we've got him...