The Mouse House by Melinda Maxwell-Smith, Earth Day, 4-22-20
There was a mouse.
Moved to our house.
It brought a friend.
Invitation without end.
I caught a mouse,
So did my spouse!
Mouse Number Nine
Seems the last in line.
Humane traps are empty
Four mornings in a row.
Now, just catching dust,
We feel a happy glow!
The humane traps have been such a good find. We think the mice were drawn to our Thanksgiving decorations stored in a garage closet - so convenient for tiny mice to enter and set up their mouse house inside of our home.
Early, on the day that six counties by the Bay declared a “Shelter-In-Place" order, we had a crew of demolition folk bash out an indoor barbecue, smoker, bar, and cupboards we were not using. We wanted to widen a very long and narrow room to repurpose it to our uses, which do not include indoor barbecuing, smoking meats, or serving drinks from a ten-foot bar. When Oakland building inspectors resume work, we’ll have a new multi-purpose room! (IF ever!)
It seems the mouses liked the idea of coming up from their now exposed underground lair to invade the kitchen, laundry area, dining room, bedroom, and pantry! Seeing a sweet little pink-eared mouse-face staring up at me from the cracker shelf prompted us to send away for tiny traps that look like small mail-boxes with breathing holes. They do not harm the mice, only close when they tip the food plate full of peanut butter and grains of rice. The traps are made of amber-tinted see-through lucite. We check them several times a day, releasing the critters, perhaps all kin, into the nearby park as soon as possible. Before setting the trap down in a four-foot tall tunnel of oat-straw weeds and opening its door, we wish them well and say, “It’s been nice. Have a good life. Be kind to each other. Play with other mice.”
We hope they enjoy their new digs even more than they enjoyed our decorations of dried blue corn and stalks of wheat… and those crackers.
Perhaps we're done with tiny mammalian invaders for a while. I wonder what’s next.
An UNvitation for an insidious Corona Virus? Where’s the trap for that?
