By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
A couple of Decembers ago, when men at the service station opened the hood of my car to check the air filter, two mice stared at them from a cozy nest inside.
That’s one of the maddening things about mice: their sense of entitlement.
At this time of year, they say to each other, “Let’s go to Janice’s house and build nests on her bulkhead stairs near the cellar door. Let’s play in her garage. Let’s nest in her car!” But they don’t think it’s my bulkhead or my garage or my car; they think it’s theirs.
I know this from evicting mice from nests on my bulkhead steps. When I startle them, they skitter a few feet toward their exit, then they turn around and look me right in the eye as if to say, “You can’t be serious. This is our place.”
I shout that I am, indeed, very serious. Then they skitter under the bulkhead door and outside, to plot their return.
That’s one of the other maddening things about mice: they are cute, with their big ears and shiny eyes.
But cuteness gets you only so far. It does not prevent me from saying, when they converse about coming into my spaces, “I think not.”
It is a constant struggle. I like to think that I am currently ahead. I cannot be sure, especially at night when Henry, an alert black cat with excellent hearing, sits at the door between the house and garage, staring at the door. (Henry is not allowed in the garage.) Or when he stares at the door between the cellar and the bulkhead. (Henry is not allowed in the bulkhead.)
In one respect, I am ahead: Mice do not get into the house itself. So far. Once, an energy audit of our house revealed places where mice had chewed through the insulation between the top of the cellar’s concrete walls and its ceiling. That insulation was replaced with a type that mice don’t like to chew. Allegedly.
I know about “allegedly.” Recently, I tried those little packets that contain a substance whose odor is allegedly repellent to mice. I placed two brand new packets in the enclosed space that is the bulkhead steps. That very night, a mouse built a nest within inches of one of those packets. Perhaps that mouse had an impaired sense of smell.
I’ve had better luck with a peppermint-scented spray, though I have not yet tried it in the bulkhead where we currently have a truce. I’ve sprayed it under the hood of my car and on the garage floor around the car. The garage is too big to spray the whole thing.
Apparently I neglected to spray sufficiently last winter because, once more, a mouse found my car’s air filter. This time, for a bunch of extra dollars, the service station guys installed a mesh over the opening of the air intake pipe. So far, so good. But still, I spray.
By now, you are probably thinking, “Buy some traps.” I do that, too, but traps are a last resort. I don’t want the little creatures deceased, I just want them elsewhere. I feel bad when I catch one. I apologize to the corpse, saying, “Sorry, little guy. Wrong time, wrong place.” Then I recycle it, leaving it outside for my local crow family who know to watch that special spot near my driveway that I call “Crow Corner.”
My traps catch only mice who are tempted by Hannaford brand crunchy peanut butter. Others might be cavorting gaily in my spaces. Only Henry knows.
Contact jlindsay@tidewater.net.
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