Of Mice and children…

So the boys came flying inside the other day, yelling for me and talking very fast. Once I got them to take a deep breath I got the following story out of them…

Apparently they were sitting on the swing when a mouse climbed up Jack’s back and hopped on Rory’s head.  What???!  Wait it gets better, the mouse had suckling babies attached to her.

I went outside to investigate.    What mouse climbs up people and runs around with nursing babies attached to her?  I walked over to the swing and sure enough found a tiny baby mouse with it’s eyes still closed in the cushion.  I had Jack pick it up and put it near the woodpile that the Mother disappeared into.

He was all set to start looking into raising a baby mouse.  I told him we have more than enough mice in the house.  Eventually a mouse came and got it.  We hope it was the Mother…

When T came home he solved the mystery.  Apparently the cushion the boys sat on contained a mouse nest and the frantic Mother was trying to save her babies.  T cut open the cushion and found yet another baby mouse.  We returned that one to the woodpile as well…  We then threw out the cushion.

The mouse looked like this one.

>Feeding the crows…

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image from maganrord.com

My husband has invented a new bird feeding technique.  Most people buy feeders and birdseed for their feathered friends, but not us.  We have found that birds (especially bigger birds) really enjoy a nice freshly killed mouse for lunch. 

Yup it’s true, we are recycling our mousetrap casualties into bird food.  Yum…

Everything you wanted to know about American crows include diet (see below)  from the Common Crow.

American Crows eat a wide variety of foods, including: fruits, grains, nuts, acorns, snails, mussels, small birds, eggs, rabbits, mice, toads, crayfish, snakes, lizards, salamanders, rats, grasshoppers, cutworms, Junebugs, grubs, weevils, and other insects.

A major food source of crows is carrion. They are often seen eating dead animals on the sides of roads (or in our yard).

>Dreaming of…mice??!!

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Mouse in the House…

As you know we seem to have solved our big rodent problem (the squirrel), but we are left with lots of smaller ones.  Lots.  For awhile hubby was trapping them (he bought one trap?) about one a night and then setting them free.  I caught him releasing one on the deck and I said “just where do you think that is going to go?”  Yes, right back into the house my friend.  So he got the great idea to mark the mice with food coloring so he would know if they were repeat customers…only there are so many mice and one trap it might be awhile before he sees the same one twice!

In the meantime, the cats have figured out about the trap.  They sit very still and wait for a mouse to come eat the bait.  Then they bat the trap all over the house and scare the poor thing to death.  Or they set the trap off themselves (it shuts and doesn’t catch a thing)… 

I suggested maybe he should buy more than one trap…and release them further away…  He’s been talking about actually getting some killing (snap!) traps.  The problem is keeping the cats away…and the kids.

The other night my daughter woke up to cat puke on her pillow (yup right next to her head).  Only it wasn’t.  It was a very slick mouse head with entrails attached.  So gross.  I paid my oldest son to pick it up with paper towels and put it in the trash.  If he only realized what I would have paid for that he would have made much more than $1!  The bedding cleaned up, but she is a little traumatized… 

The other night she came downstairs and told us there was a dead mouse on her floor and she had stepped on it with her bare feet.  It turned out to by my gray fuzzy slipper that I had left in her room.  Now that would have been some mouse!  Two nights ago she came in bed with us due to nightmares.  In the morning we found out they were mice-mares…