OT: Cranberry was right ...

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Fri May 30, 2003 1:57 pm

I caught Ralph.

I didn't catch him on purpose.

I was in the kitchen and heard that familiar crunch crunch crunch noise coming from the pantry.

I said to myself, "Now Ralph. I thought we had an understanding that you would stay out of the pantry as long as I paid you off with peanut butter and chocolate in my office." And I went to investigate.

The crunching was coming from behind the pantry door, where we put the cardboard boxes for recycling. I opened the door, and the crunching continued. I picked up a box, and the crunching stopped. But I didn't hear any scurrying.

There were only two boxes left, both Cheerios boxes. "He couldn't be in one of those with me so close. He would be long gone by now," I thought.

I looked inside the first Cheerios box. Nothing.

I looked inside the second Cheerios box. This one still had the wax paper bag inside.

"Could he be inside the bag?" I thought. I pulled the bag out of the box, and there, calmly looking out at me from inside the bag, was Ralph. Didn't seem at all upset.

I showed him to Arleen, and we agreed that I should take him for a little drive and release him somewhere away from houses.

So I took Ralph out to a little clearing by a pond in the middle of a woods about a half mile from here. He scurried off into the tall grass, and I went home, feeling saddened by the fact that I had lost my business partner and companion.

Then I went on the Internet to find out what Ralph is. He has a short tail, long thin body and pointy nose. And he's little. I thought he might be a vole/field mouse because of the short tail, but I found that they're a lot bigger than Ralph and don't have pointy noses.

I think he's just a house mouse with a short tail.

Anyway, I read about what voles, mice and the like eat in the wild. That made me feel a lot better. They eat almost everything. So I don't have to worry that Ralph will starve out there. On the other hand, I also found that almost everything eats Ralph. Be careful, Ralph!

I decided not to dismantle the workstation where Ralph cleaned out the insides of almost empty peanut butter jars and sampled chocolates, in case there were more mice in the house. That would be a good way to find out.

Sure enough, right on schedule, around 11 P.M. another Ralph showed up and took over where the original Ralph left off, cleaning out the almost empty peanut butter jar.

I guess I'll have to go to WalMart and get some of those Mouse Cube humane traps Cranberry told me about.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Fri May 30, 2003 2:19 pm

I'm always right.

Did his tail look like it had been bitten off, or did it come to a slight taper? Common house mice (mus musculus) have tails about the same lenght as their body and they come to a slight taper at the very end, but when the mommy mouse is cleaning 10 newborn babies, it's easy to accidntally bite one of their legs or tail off. Could have also been a cat or something, too. Or a snap trap. Snap trap = evil.

The Mouse Cubes always worked but I never had more than a couple mice loose at any given time. I think hav-a-heart makes bigger traps that can catch more mice at once or are made of metal, etc., but I've never tried them. Obviously I'd want to say don't buy the kind that snaps and breaks their neck. If it was fast and painless I'd be less adversed to it, I think (wow, I don't think I just said that), but lots of times they're just really badly injured and stuck in the trap, a horrifying experience I'm sure. The best way to get rid of mice is to cut off their food supply and they'll move to your neighbors house or a field. If they can't get to your cheerios or peanut butter, they have to find somewhere else to go.

Deermice (deermouses, lol) are really common here, and I think they go to New York, too...

They're a different species from mus musculus, but unless you've seen a lot of regular mice, you might be able to tell the difference. They appear more fragile to me and have larger eyes.

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Fri May 30, 2003 2:31 pm

Hi, Cranberry.

I think you've explained the tail. It looked blunt, like it had been bitten off.

If I catch a lot of mice and they all have tails like that, we'll have to rethink the theory.

We've put most of the pantry stuff in mouse-proof containers, with the result (if you'll remember from several episodes back) that Ralph chewed a hole in my wife's purse and ate her chocolate. That was what gave me the idea of feeding him in my office to keep him out of her purses.

I think I'll use a combination of a mouse feeding/workstation in my office and humane traps to keep them to a manageable number. After all, until I catch them, I can use the extra workforce here at the International Whistle Tweaking Research and Production Consortium headquarters.

Best wishes,
Jerry

trisha · Post by **trisha** » Sat May 31, 2003 4:45 pm

We did the mouse-proof containers bit in our last house after the house mice moved in one winter and the cat couldn't cope. Result - got a moth infestation instead which ate most things from the inside of the box. Result - well we moved...but we were moving anyway.

Trisha

tansy · Post by **tansy** » Sat May 31, 2003 5:52 pm

jerry,you know if you get a dreaded cat, they will leave. can't stand the sent of cats those little meese. i remembert years ago , i moved into an apartment with my two cats, they got one the first night and that was it, they all left and the other tenants became infested. if you don't want to go cat ,borrow one for a few days. also cat fur placed about is a deterant

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Sat May 31, 2003 6:14 pm

The problem with a cat is, Arleen's deathly allergic to them.

I'm happy with the present arrangement. Fact is, I like mice. As long as there's only one or two mice at a time and I have a way of keeping them from messing things up, that's fine, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I must say -- Ralph number two isn't as good company as Ralph number one was.

Ralph number two is more furtive. Doesn't stick around and hang out like Ralph number one. I could talk on the phone and Ralph number one would be right next to me, busily cleaning out the inside of a peanut butter jar. He had gotten very used to me.

When I caught him, he just looked at me from inside the wax paper bag like, "Oh, hello there. It's you, is it? Nothing for me to worry about then."

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Sat May 31, 2003 6:22 pm

You know, different cultures have different attitudes about mice and such like.

One of the people I was traveling with in India some years ago reported to the handyman at the place where we were staying that a mouse was getting into his room through the space under the door, and could the handyman please put a piece of wood there to fill up the space?

My friend went out for the day and forgot about the mouse. When he came back, he found the handyman waiting for him. The handyman proudly showed him how he had fitted a piece of wood to fill up the space under the door, with a hole at one end for the mouse to come in and a hole at the other end for the mouse to go out!

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 4:52 pm

Yea, I say get a cat. My cat lives outside and eats those little voles and such and keeps them out of my mother's bulbs. Unfortunatly she also goes after birds sometimes. Luckily, they usually get away from her, she's too fat and lazy.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 5:51 pm

You should NEVER keep a cat outdoors. Ask any good vet and they'll tell you why.

This is one of those topics where I think I might go into 'insane' mode, so I'll (try to) just shut up now.

janice · Post by **janice** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:12 pm

Or get a fox terrier.......(or maybe not-I just found a rabbit nest 10 feet away from my back door; my terrier must not be as scary to small critters as I thought he was)

brianormond · Post by **brianormond** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:38 pm

As to outdoor cats/indoor cats, I agree a host of sad things are likely to happen to an outdoor cat, most of which indoor cats avoid, and the chances are pretty high of it happening over a cat's lifetime. My family's beloved but long-gone old orange & white tabby would have been a miserable indoor-only cat, however, as he loved to go lay in the birdseed we put out for local songbirds. He was never a hunter, but I fear indoor life would have relegated him to systematic desperation. He breathed his last out there, hoping despite experience that local birds weren't smart enough to pick out his orange & white striped bulk from the grain around him.

OTOH, We lost several cats to cars over the years, and only one to indoor mishap, and outdoor cats have a profound effect on the local bird and small animal population. I don't mind if its exotics like starlings, english sparrows or norway rats but its never just these, rather these in addition to cedar waxwings, cardinals, towhees, jays, juncos, chickadees, voles, deer mice and the occasional cottontail.

-Bookstore cats have the best deal-lots of exposure to passing events, attention and new people, but no exposure to
hazards of the street or the outdoors, and a big picture window to watch the outer world from.

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:52 pm

Ralph has asked me if I could request that you guys stop talking about cats and fox terriers and the like. It makes him really nervous.

He tried to post about it himself, but he was having a lot of trouble with the keyboard. He can't push down on the keys hard enough to make them work, and if he jumps up and down on them, he loses his balance and doesn't get the right letters.

If you guys keep up like this, I'm afraid Ralph will stop showing up for work. I have enough trouble with the elves, as unreliable as they are, and the way they get into the liquor (I can't do this operation without them, though!). I finally get a good, sober, reliable mouse, and you guys start scaring the daylights out of him!

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 7:01 pm

brianormond wrote:-Bookstore cats have the best deal-lots of exposure to passing events, attention and new people, but no exposure to
hazards of the street or the outdoors, and a big picture window to watch the outer world from.

Speaking of good jobs for a c*t. The local momandpop hardware store has two that quite clearly believe themselves the rightful owners of the store, along with all the store's clientele.

One day, I heard the voice of the store owner from her office, "If you're going to throw up, then go outside." I had to think for a minute to imagine whom she might be addressing.

Mack.Hoover · Post by **Mack.Hoover** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 7:15 pm

http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/release/2002/060302.html

Mice are nice...
They're cute and tricky!
Such are Stuart L. and Mickey.
But way out here there's one to fear:
The one who's first name is "deer".
He'sa the one we don'ta wanta
Unless you wanta the virus Hanta!

Jerry Freeman · Post by **Jerry Freeman** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 8:42 pm

Hi, Mack.

Thanks for your concern.

Although there may have been a case or two here in New York state, we don't hear about hantavirus being as much of a concern as it is where you are. If hantavirus is something for me to worry about, my biggest risk is from the dusty, mousy air in the barn/workshop, since the disease is picked up by inhalation of mouse contaminated dust.

Best wishes,
Jerry