If there's only one mouse in the house, it seems to have moved. (Quite right, too - it's fucking cold in the back of the house.) Spotted it last night while watching late night TV (and the crawl of all the school closings... it's so cold I'll actually be staying home instead of making my weekly foray for the crossword in today's newspaper) - it ( Read more... )

Or one mice, anyway - spotted feasting on an apple core in the wastebasket in the den. Several times. Right in front of my husband, the brazen thing. So now we know what to use to bait the Tin Cat tomorrow: one yummy apple core. Followed by a free trip to the park, so it's not just following one or the other of us back inside (as is probably the ( Read more... )

So far I've caught three of the little bastards in the Tin Cat. Or rather, the Tin Cat has, on three separate occasions, trapped a shrew - since I've only seen one at a time, it could be the same bloke coming in from the cold again and again. Didn't even mean to trap the third one - I'd brought the trap in from the cold and set it down on the floor ( Read more... )

I've taken over dealing with the unwilling inhabitants of the Tin Cat, which involves taking the trap several blocks away to a vacant lot with a big oak tree and some bushes (and thus ensuring that they're never, ever coming back). Only two mice so far, but they seem pretty enthusiastic about that tree - the first one shimmied right up it, after a ( Read more... )

Yep, mousies (actual mice, not shrews) are back. We caught a couple of 'em (or at least I assume it wasn't the same one coming back - I still think we should take the trap all the way out to one of the parks, instead of releasing in the back yard... or at least build a mouse-a-pult :), but haven't really got around to rebaiting the trap. I can hear ( Read more... )

Oh, did I say we don't have shrews in the house anymore? Silly me. Greatly surprised, the other day, to see a shrew (or at least a stumpy-ass looking furbazoid) skitter across the kitchen floor. Like, "Yawp!" surprised. The Tin Cat, alas, has been deployed. (Then again, there's that whole "tiny carnivore in reach of one's feet" issue again ( Read more... )

Playing Working in the garden today, pulling weeds. Managed to piss off a colony of ants with the weed-pulling in one area. Heard what sounded like a bird or possibly a baby rabbit (I don't know, I've never actually heard a baby rabbit pipe up, as far as I know), and followed the sound... to a clump of violets. This is clearly not a bird. Say, I ( Read more... )