No, I’m not talking about the bizarre “martyred” Palestinian TV show mouse, but the mice in my garage. You see, for a long while now we’ve had mice living in our garage. I think it corresponds to the time I first put up a bird feeder in the backyard.
Mice first made a home underneath the air conditioner. Then they migrated under the house. From there, the conquered the garage. I’m cool (ha!) with them under the air conditioner: its outside, after all. I’m not too concerned about them under the house, either. But taking over the garage? That was the last straw.
Actually, there have been plenty of last straws. I bought a “live” mouse trap a few months ago and felt pretty satisfied when I bagged two mice almost immediately. I thought that might be all until I discovered a hole to the crawlspace you could drive a mouse-sized truck through. I plugged it with steel wool and baited the live trap again.
Boom, the bait was stolen. Again and again. Sometimes within a half an hour! In place of the peanut-butter bait was a few mouse-dropping calling cards.
I stopped baiting it, but the calling cards still appeared. Obviously I had to take a different tack.
You know the “mouse blaster” device, guaranteed to repel mice? Not so much.
Finally, I threw in the towel and declared war. I’m a pretty critter-friendly guy, but my kid-gloves approach wasn’t working. In a clear escalation, I deployed poison blocks in two places in the garage.
I had my first hint of success when I checked for the blocks and found them missing: the mice had carted them back to their nests, apparently. I found a dead mouse right in the middle of the garage floor this afternoon – the first confirmed kill. I wondered if I’d find any more.
I didn’t have to wait long. While I was mowing the lawn, I kept catching whiff of a decomposing animal. Later I found an, uh, extremely dead mouse next to the air conditioner. It was quite stinky. I bagged the two and tossed them into the trash. But why did I find a dead mouse outside? Could it have gotten into the garage’s poison? If so, how?
There are dead mice under the house now, too, apparently. Again, I wonder if they got the poison or it was just a mere coincidence. I’m hesitant to go get them but it may be a long while before the smell gets any better.
I suppose its the old saying “be careful what you ask for.”
Our upstairs air conditioner in Cary quit working last week. Suzzanne called the repair folk and they found that the problem was caused by… you guessed it, a mouse. Apparently he got into the relay box and fried himself. His decomposing body then corroded all of the contacts so that the relay no longer functioned.
Ugh.
That might be reason for me to discourage them from living in my AC unit!