Mouse Invasion

     I stood there on the basement floor, in my sandals and shorts.  The animal headed straight for me.  I sidestepped.  It corrected course to come right at me.  I stepped over it.

      The mouse stopped, confused.  Its jaunt across the basement floor was more of a meander than a scamper or scurry you associate with a mouse in full out speed.  I surmised that it had too much of the wrong stuff to eat.

      It was a little after six a.m., but it was the second close encounter of the mouse kind that morning.  About half an hour earlier, the Goodwife and I were awakened by a rustling we agreed was probably a mouse in our bedroom.

      I couldn’t get back to sleep, worrying about how I would find the breech in our seawall holding back the rodent flood.  So I got up.  I tried to be quiet, hoping not to spook the mouse, knowing there was a trap in the vicinity where he was scratching.

      Instead, I went to the basement to check some traps I had set there the night before.  I hadn’t been down there long before the mouse came across the floor towards me.  I looked for a bucket or something to cover him until I could figure out what to do with him.

      An old-fashioned plunger stood nearby.  I grabbed it and plopped it down over him.  I shoved a dustpan under the plunger and proceeded up the steps, holding plunger and dustpan together securely.  Safely outdoors, I pulled the plunger and gave the dustpan a good flip, sending the mouse on probably his last journey.

      This wasn’t the first time mice have invaded.  Probably the worst invasion happened the winter of 1985-86.

     Dad had been in the nursing home for a while.  He hated it.  He referred to it as “the house of neglect.”  Mom told him if he could get well enough to walk from bed to bath to kitchen, he could leave the nursing home and come home, but she couldn’t get him out of bed and move him in a wheel chair. 

      He worked at it, and finally the day came when he was ready to come home.  It took an act of congress to get the nursing home to release him.  Documents and waivers and releases had to be signed.  All in the name of health and safety, they said.  Probably more to do with losing a paying customer.

        Uncle Ricky and I were both unemployed that winter.  As part of the deal, we would take turns staying with the folks and helping out with Dad’s care.  That didn’t last but a couple of weeks before Mom decided it was easier to take care of Dad than having to feed us boys.  But it was during that time that the great invasion occurred.

     Every morning, part of the routine was emptying the many traps set about the house.  Ricky referred to it as “checking the trap line.”  One of the places the mice frequented was the attic of the west wing that had been added in the 1970’s.

      Mom could smell the beasts.  Even after that invasion was stifled, she would occasionally tell me I had better check the attic traps.  Her bedroom shared the attic with the entryway and the piano room.  Usually, when she told me to check, there were mice caught in the traps.

       The attic traps were the most unpleasant to service.  You had to step up two or three steps on a ladder, push up the attic access door, set it to one side, step up another step on the ladder and peer into the dark attic.  Your face was about a foot away from the traps and their content.

      At first, there were individual traps set out.  But a few of those disappeared when a wounded mouse would crawl off, taking the trap with him.  Mom took a small sheet of 3/8” plywood, about 10” X 16”, and ran a wire across three traps .  She secured the wire at both ends of the plywood with staples.  The wire kept the traps from going anywhere after they had been sprung.  With your head (and your nose) about a foot away from the trap-laden plywood, you reached into the attic and removed it.  Then you could take it all outdoors and clean out the traps.

     Mom also got tired of having to bait the traps.  She took thread and secured a small chunk of cheese to the bait arm of each trap.  The thread went over the cheese chunk and around the bait platform.  Somehow, she tied a knot in that thread.  When the cheese dried, it was pretty secure.

       Set the traps and return them to their place went the routine.  It wasn’t much fun.  Eventually, I discovered where the mice were entering.  It was across the house on the east side where the back porch joined the main house.  Fixing that gap was complicated by a basement window-well abutting both foundations, the house and the porch.  And, there were two upright propane bottles by the window-well and the porch north wall. 

      I tried many ways to plug the hole:  masonry cement--hard to get it to defy gravity long enough to cure and cling in place.  The mice enjoyed chewing through various types of caulk.  They could push aside the steel wool enough to slip by.  Finally, what worked was a combination of steel wool and caulk.  That stopped the inflow into the attic.

     How did they get across the house from ground level to the attic?  I figure they must be going up house or porch wall, going between second story floor and main floor ceiling, perhaps following an electric wire route, using the holes through walls, to make their journey.  Ever after, whenever the mice got into the west wing attic, I would check out the triple witching joint of house and porch foundation and the basement window well.  Fixing it required my hanging down into the window well, turning to my left to look up to see where the portal was.

      The other grand entrance for the rodents was the cellar door.  The cellar door is the old-fashioned exterior set of steps, the one with the low sloping door that swings open to reveal a set of concrete steps leading to another door in the basement wall.  Mice that came in through gaps in that doorway would find traps on the shelf that runs the perimeter of the basement.  They would also find their way to the upstairs.

     The Goodwife always scolds me when she sees a trap in a bedroom or office. “ How do you want to discover that mice are in the house, by finding a dead one in a trap, or find live ones in your pantry or closet?” I ask.

    In the most recent invasion, I caught two in upstairs bedrooms.  I patched two places in the cellar door assembly.  For a week or two, there were no more incidents.  Then the week the Goodwife went with me to the farm, a wave hit.  It peaked Sunday morning.

     After disposing with the loco dustpan mouse in the basement, I checked upstairs.  Sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap in our bedroom.  What we interpreted as the mouse scuffling around was probably the mouse in the trap in  his death throes.  Time to return to the cellar door.

       A corner had pretty well rotted out.  The wood no longer held the screws that secured aluminum wrapping designed to keep the buggers out.  Steel wool and screen filled the gap.  I was fairly certain I had found the breech.

     I did crawl around the perimeter of the house craning my neck to see if any other gaps suitable for admitting mice had developed over the years.  I found two or three other likely places and plugged them as well. 

      We were packed and ready to leave Sunday afternoon.  I was about to lock up when I heard another scuffling, this time in the kitchen cabinet where we keep the pots and pans.  I threw open the cupboard door.  Nothing.

     I pulled out the “cracker” drawer.  There was a bugger staring right at me.  I jerked the drawer out of the cabinet.  He tried to get out of the drawer.  I grabbed a box of crackers and slapped at him to keep him in the drawer.

       Somehow, I opened two doors,  all the while carrying the drawer and whacking at the mouse to keep him in the drawer.  Once outside, I ceased the cracker box artillery and allowed the invader to jump out of the drawer and run for dear life, away from the house.

      Maybe that was the last one, I thought.  Vainly.  When I returned on Wednesday, I had four mice in traps, and one more deceased from an unsavory diet.  All the mice were in the basement, except for one in a trap upstairs, again.

       Time to revisit conventional wisdom.  Rechecking the cellar door, I saw no way a mouse could enter there.  I reset the traps and turned to other pursuits.

      The next morning, I had one mouse in the basement.  He was caught near the water heater.  But the bait was missing in three other traps.  Once again, I was crawling around the house, trying to check the joint  between concrete foundation and wood sill plate.  I put screen on some places they might be able to penetrate.

      The following morning, I had one mouse in a trap near the electrical breaker box on the east wall of the basement.  Two other traps had missing bait.  How can they get the bait out of those traps without triggering the thing?  I can barely set them down without springing them.

      One more search.  This time, I found a very likely leak hole where the cement steps  have pulled away from the house foundation.  Screen and steel wool to the rescue, maybe. 

      But no.  I found one more dead mouse in a trap this morning, again near the electrical box in the basement.  They must be getting in through the east wall.  Back to my hands and knees, shoving steel wool and window screen into gaps.  I shoved caulk into the screen and steel wool plugs to help hold them in place. 

      For tomorrow (and all my morrows) may all my traps be empty traps.  Having finished that job, I turned to the garden.  Two rabbits inside the fenced garden headed for the southeast corner as I entered the gate.  Through the fence they went, encouraged by my shouted epithets.

     “Fence-crawling stinkers,” Dad would have called them.  I used old window screen and lath to try to close that breech.

     I guess I have been called to plug gaps in the fortress walls.  I’ve always imagined something nobler.