Life, the Universe, and Stuff

I learned yesterday from a neighbor one of the basics about country mice. In the process of a construction, as the soil is turned over, the mice population gets evicted from they current home and goes about finding a new abode. It didn't matter that we keep our house clean of food crumbs and perfectly sanitary, because with the houses being built around us we were bound to receive some guests.

Late last night, I took a trip around our basement and found scat scattered around (I had fun writing that, by the way). Intermixed with little pellets of feces, there were little chewed up pieces of some green material that is probably the paper-like surface of the sheet rock using in our house's construction. The bastards chewed their way into the house through brick and through sheet rock. Now what remains to be done (1) is to find their entry point and plug it somehow, and (2) put poison-bait between beams and insulation material in the basement.

At the end of my basement tour, I discovered the cadaver of another mouse lying there. The current theory which will not be substantiated by any further evidence is that this one fell from a beam and died in the crash with the floor eight feet below. This morning, I went about disposing of the critter only to notice that as I scooped it up with a folded magazine, the mouth stretched open for a (final?) gasp of air.

One man, two weeks, four mice. Hopefully, no more.