Of Mice and a Man

Okay, let's all get up to speed. Y'all recall the notorious mouse posts from about a year ago? (The follow up is here). Well, we were advised that a probable reason for it was the buildup of seeds on the ground from our bird feeders. Birds, being oddly particular about their nourishment, tend to scatter fifty sunflower seeds for every one they eat. Meaning, of course, that A) I personally am keeping some sunflower farmer outside Fresno in business, and B) I have been providing one big, steaming heap of mouse attractant in my backyard for the past couple of years.

See, we thought it'd be cool just to let the sunflowers grow, and we have done so, year after year. Underneath the one bird feeder on the west end of the yard sprouts glorious four- and five-foot-tall sunflowers, growing in what can only be described as the springiest mass of organic matter this side of a Trek episode.

The weather has been cooling down, as it is wont to do this time of year in this part of the country, and, being as how this Saturday was quite possibly going to be the last sunny, reasonably warm day until April, I decided to take advantage of it and get some yardwork done. I mowed both lawns, I chopped down the now dead tomato vines (I actually ran them over with the mower - too cool, watching the remnants of half-ripe beefsteak tomatoes explode like water balloons). I did the same with the remnants of the sunflower patch, discarding the broken pieces of stem into the compost bin. I was then left with a four foot by three foot patch of ground that was almost, but not completely, composed of sunflower seeds and shells.

Brandishing my trusty straightedged shovel, I began lifting up great heaps of sunflower seeded soil. The amount of earthworms in it was staggering. Two things I didn't expect. One was the sheer number of earthworms in that fertile piece of soil - there was honestly at least one earthworm per half-inch of dirt.

The other thing I didn't expect was to see a small, furry, gray thing go scampering into the underbrush of the ornamental shrub next to the ground I was clearing. A mouse!

It was at this point that I found it.

I looked at the spadeful of dirt I'd just picked up, and there, in the middle of it, squirming pitifully, was a baby mouse, eyes not even open.

I stared at it incredulously for a few moments, then noticed it limping morosely across the breadth of the shovel, dragging a rear leg.

Dear God, I'd hurt it.

I'll spare you the details on how I dispatched the little dude, but let's just say it was fast and merciful, and quite traumatic for me.

After disposing of him, I gingerly turned over a patch of earth that was, well, squirming. Underneath it, I found eight, count 'em, eight, baby mice. All squished up together, inside a nest made of grass.

Not really thinking, and acting out of a certain sense of remorse over my euthanizing of one of their siblings, I moved all of them to a plastic flowerpot.

Within moments, the mommy mouse came scampering out of the brush, searching around where the nest had been. Looking for her babies.

Great. I've now:
A) Murdered a baby mouse.
B) Destroyed the only home it and its siblings had ever known.
C) Kidnapped the remaining children.

In different circumstances, I could be tried in international court for crimes against humanity. Well, mouseity, anyway.

I tried to capture mommy mouse for over two hours, and she'd always scamper away. I even turned the flowerpot sideways and laid it on the ground in an attempt to entice her in.

See, my master plan was to relocate this now-one member smaller family to a field somewhere (preferably, so far away as to preclude any attempt to make it back to their former digs). Problem was, I couldn't get mommy, and without mommy, the mice were, well, out of mousy luck, shall we say.

That's why Kat and I could be found in our garage at least five times a day through late Saturday and all day Sunday, bottle feeding these little rodents. Didja know they squeak? And they're kinda cute, despite their verminy badness?

They're also rather resolute, as mommy mouse proved (or, at least we hope it was mommy mouse), as we spotted her scurrying across the garage floor Sunday afternoon. This then prompted a trip to Home Depot for a purchase of "humane" mousetraps - these little outfits are set up on a counterweight system, so when the mouse enters the trap, it's weight causes a hatch to close down, trapping (but not killing) it. I was hoping we'd catch mommy mouse so I could reunite her with her family, and release them all together, figuring she'd take care of her younguns.

We decided late last night, however, that having mice in the house (even in the garage) wasn't a very good proposition - if mommy mouse could smell them enough to come in after them (and God only knows how she pulled that one off), then we were sure to attract more, was our thinking. The mice had to go. And go to school this morning they did.

Of course, in the process of getting them into the car, I managed to spill nearly the entire contents of the can of kitten milk we'd been feeding them all over my school papers to correct. They should have that lovely spoiled milk smell by tomorrow morning - gotta love that.

I managed to pawn them off on Lindsay, the new 8th grade science teacher. However, she was a mite too squeamish to feed them herself, so she brought them over to me. I fed them in the morning, and, in a prophetic moment, one of them squirmed out of my gloved hand and made a dash for it across my classroom. I hurled student chairs out of the way going after my quarry, cornering it by the whiteboard.

So this is why I was at work tonight, in between parent conferences, bottle feeding the mice at my desk, when the last one squirmed out of my hands. Not wishing to face a repeat of what happened earlier, I clapped my gloved hands against my midsection in an attempt to trap him. Upon pulling my hands away... it was gone. I immediately fell to my knees and began pushing boxes and the recycling crate aside from under my desk... no mouse. I ran around to the front of my desk, peered under student tables... still, no mouse.

Well, ain't that just craptacular.

So, here's this wild animal in my classroom, blind, unable to eat anything but mother's milk, scurrying for its dear life. I made a halfhearted attempt to find it with a flashlight, but to no avail. It was gone. I prayed as the next two sets of parents came in for conferences that it wouldn't streak across the room in front of them, and also that it wouldn't bite some kid tomorrow in class.

As you can see, things were getting a bit dicey.

I finished up my parent conferences about 90 minutes later, finished up my plans for tomorrow, turned out my lights, and headed home. On the way, I stopped for dinner at our local sushi place, and went by Home Depot to buy six more humane traps: two more for the garage for mommy mouse, and four for my classroom, hoping against hope that infant, blind mouse would somehow stumble into one of them.

Turns out I didn't need to.

Like many a person coming home after a long day's work, I headed for Dad's Reading Room with the new issue of Consumer Reports. Upon, uh, positioning myself upon the throne therein, I espied something quite disturbing.

On the floor of my royal commode chamber was the body of a mouse. A dead mouse. A dead, somewhat squished mouse.

I stared at it for over a minute, until the horror of it all dawned on me.


The mouse had gotten caught in the waistband of my pants, and I'd been carrying it around on my body for over two hours.



I really have nothing else to say here, other than I believe I'm going to go take a really, really, really long shower now.