Feb 06 2009
The Mouse Problem
Mice are such wonderful little critters. Except when they have multiplied beyond your wildest dreams and become a nightmare in reality.
We lived in a small farmhouse back in Colorado nestled among corn fields and livestock pasture. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? It does until the sun goes down.
We moved in thinking we had found utopia, but what we found was a mouse hive.
You could hear them in the walls, scurrying along and even falling inside of them. You could see them running along the floors and between your feet.
We had two cats then, and soon enlisted the help of three new kittens all of whom attempted to help. Our entertainment at night amounted to watching the older cats catching mice and the younger ones learning to catch mice, amounting to our own private circus inside the house.
We kept our feet propped up, so they would run under our legs instead of up them….
Traps were tried, but we are talking hundreds of mice here. The cats were well fed.
We finally did get the mouse problem under control, using Bar Bait and a gang of well fed cats. All the time we lived in that house we had at least a dozen feline mouse hunters both inside and out.
I had to haul our trash to the local dump and every time I loaded it the cats would come running. Mice would start bailing out of the trash and the chase was on. Every so often some sneaky little grey fur ball would hold out until in the truck to try and escape, but we had a few cats that had caught on to that trick and would sit on the truck and watch.
On one memorable occasion the mouse held out until I was underway, and made his way into the open window and across my arm, across my lap and down my leg to hide under the seat. Never a dull moment….
Thomas H. Forthe
