Kingdom Animalia Phylum Chordata Subphylum Vertebrata Class Mammalia Order Rodentia Suborder Sc

... Species Mus musculus.

During some room cleaning that dancingdeer was driving me to*, we discovered some unfortunately recognizable evidence of a bit of a mouse problem in my room.

With some hours of cleaning, shifting, moving, emptying of 100+ records off of a shelf, crawling on floors, vacuuming and so on, we figured out not only where they were coming from, but what in particular had drawn them around at least 3 sides of my room... a bag of microwave popcorn, still in its plastic overwrap, under a cabinet that it had no business having made it under. How it made it under there will remain a mystery for the ages.

Eventually, I managed to dig it out from under that cabinet.

( Here are 2 moderately large pictures of what I saw... )

So, then, with that disposed of, we traced back the other way.

Behind my bed is a metal grate, a wall mounted air-duct grate. Of course, this house has baseboard heating, not forced air.

On the other side of that wall is the crawlspace behind tcb's room. In that crawlspace, we discovered where the air-ducts had once run. Later inspection would show that that core did, indeed, run all the way into the basement.

A quick trip to Tags, while Marlowe was staying fixedly in my room, waiting to prove his abilities as a mouser, 2 live catch traps and a small heap of "Rat and Mouse Bars_II" (Sorry, quietann and kirkcudbright, I'll catch and release what I can, but the ones wandering in the core of the house are not worth tracking) and one snap trap were procured, the live catches have been put where the cats might be likely to get access to a poisoned mouse, the bars are in the walls and core where the cats never go, and the snap's still looking for a home...

There's still some more cleaning to go, more places to inspect, but I think we've found what's drawing them to the 3rd floor (the path is Very distinct and there's been limited nibbling at anything else - mainly at a couple of towels.) and on the 2nd floor, the most obvious food source (RIP various packages of hot chocolate, including a small bag of Burdick's) has been removed and cleaned up.

Let's hope that's that.

*which is just another way of saying "was helping with by getting me off my butt to actually get it done." :)

Kingdom Animalia Phylum Chordata Subphylum Vertebrata Class Mammalia Order Rodentia Suborder Sc

... Species Mus musculus.

During some room cleaning that dancingdeer was driving me to*, we discovered some unfortunately recognizable evidence of a bit of a mouse problem in my room.

With some hours of cleaning, shifting, moving, emptying of 100+ records off of a shelf, crawling on floors, vacuuming and so on, we figured out not only where they were coming from, but what in particular had drawn them around at least 3 sides of my room... a bag of microwave popcorn, still in its plastic overwrap, under a cabinet that it had no business having made it under. How it made it under there will remain a mystery for the ages.

Eventually, I managed to dig it out from under that cabinet.

( Here are 2 moderately large pictures of what I saw... )

So, then, with that disposed of, we traced back the other way.

Behind my bed is a metal grate, a wall mounted air-duct grate. Of course, this house has baseboard heating, not forced air.

On the other side of that wall is the crawlspace behind tcb's room. In that crawlspace, we discovered where the air-ducts had once run. Later inspection would show that that core did, indeed, run all the way into the basement.

A quick trip to Tags, while Marlowe was staying fixedly in my room, waiting to prove his abilities as a mouser, 2 live catch traps and a small heap of "Rat and Mouse Bars_II" (Sorry, quietann and kirkcudbright, I'll catch and release what I can, but the ones wandering in the core of the house are not worth tracking) and one snap trap were procured, the live catches have been put where the cats might be likely to get access to a poisoned mouse, the bars are in the walls and core where the cats never go, and the snap's still looking for a home...

There's still some more cleaning to go, more places to inspect, but I think we've found what's drawing them to the 3rd floor (the path is Very distinct and there's been limited nibbling at anything else - mainly at a couple of towels.) and on the 2nd floor, the most obvious food source (RIP various packages of hot chocolate, including a small bag of Burdick's) has been removed and cleaned up.

Let's hope that's that.

*which is just another way of saying "was helping with by getting me off my butt to actually get it done." :)