Wednesday, January 16, 2008

This old mouse house


You may not be aware of my ongoing mouse harvest that has been going on in my basement. So far I've caught 10 alive and 1 dead deer mice. I've had so many that I have been able to verify they are not house mice but rather deer mice. I had thought I had patched their portal into the basements of my condo with some expandable foam. But this weekend I went to investigate the baseboard heater in the communal basement hallway to see if it would work. I bent down and looked below it and saw a hole in the wall that I could have put my fist through. So I fetched my semi-used and dried expanding foam and tried to patch it. The tube was full of dried foam so after pressing the button for a minute and no foam, I decided to unscrew the tube. Unfortunately a lot of pressure had been building so the foam went flying everywhere. Apparently there is no known chemical to remove the dried foam and trying to wash it with water just speeds the drying process. So my jeans and shirt are pretty much ruined unless father time can help remove it by cracking small bits off at a time. You can use nail polish remover if it's still wet, but it did not remove it on my skin. It's mostly peeled off my now. So I managed to squirt the foam into wall, but it was difficult without the tube. It was like trying to fill a giant sideways hole with whipped cream. I did my best and covered it with duct tape since the foam kept falling out of the hole. Every since then, the mouse harvest has been stepped up. I caught two juvenile mice that were scared out of the whits when I released them. They didn't move and just stared at me like "I've never been outside before! It's big, bright, and scary!" It made me sad with their big eyes and ears, but at least they are getting a second shot at life. Then they finally would scurry away. I wish I had my camera for those two since the others run away at the speed of light. I'm thinking by next week I will have confirmed that there are more mice than people living in my building. I also thought about releasing a snake into my basement ceiling to capture the rest of the mice.

2 comments:

Jules said...

You are one tough chic. I love how you handle your own problems and aren't scared. Very cool. (but please don't put a snake down there!?!)

Kartek said...

JK about the snake...seems like my recent patch job may be doing the trick. No new mice hostages and only 2 little presents left since saturday.