Mice Nest Versus Bec and Matt: Attempt 1

A feisty nest of mice set up camp in what appeared to be an abandoned compost bin. One sunny Sunday afternoon, it seemed to intermittently get brighter as the roof of their home opened and closed. They mostly ignored this interruption to their happy life, although they got the sudden urge to hide occasionally with it. Meanwhile on the surface, two conniving humans plotted the mice's demise.

Could they just fill the whole compost bin with ratsac? No, environmentally too risky.
Could they get a cat and put it in the compost bin and see who won? Nope, don't have a cat, and are sort of allergic too them.
Could they fill the whole thing with cement and hope it filled up the underground holes and drowned the mice? Matt looks at Bec like she's crazy and explains about the viscosity of cement and the fact that such a plan is unlikely to succeed. But he looks at her thoughtfully....
And a plan is hatched

One person to hose the bottom to help create a bit of a general seal, perhaps try and flood the tunnels if possible (we have a pretty clay like ground). Dry ice in the compost bin.... What does this equal??? A little mouse gas chamber! Advantage: at the end there are no poisoned mice that other animals might eat and accidently get poisoned, and there is no impact on the compost in our bin. Practically an organic solution to pest control!

Day 2 of evil plan.
Call local fishing store that always advertises it has dry ice... you need to order it a day in a day in advance. Start madly phoning places to find dry ice. Invite friend to mouse massacre as Matt is at work. Drive with friend to Capalaba (45 minutes), get $40 block of dry ice - meant to last 4 days when camping. Stop at produce store to get some conventional non-killing mouse traps - they have run out (is there an infestation??). Keep going. Stop for sustenance. Get home. Put wire around bin so that if mice run out, they will all be herded towards the mallet wielding Bec and the bucket wielding friend. Hose bottom of bin and drop dry ice in top. Wait expectantly. Wonder where the mouse are. Look in bin. Poke compost. Mmmm.... Go inside to leave the gas chamber to develop. After a while go back outside again. Open compost, sift through it. One dead mouse ($40 later). Not suffocated so much as frozen to death (perhaps after being stunned by a giant block of ice falling on it). Rethink plan. Find mouse entrance to subterranean network. Place dry ice block (which is heavy and cold and difficult to safely maneuver) over hole. Put plastic container over the top of the dry ice, try and pile things around bottom to create a better seal. Hope for the best. Success can only be measured in whether there is a dead animal smell in a few weeks.

Future plan: to put the traps that trap the mice alive (to minimise risk to other animals) around outside. Still need to buy these.

Stay tuned for further attempts on the mice's lives.

Mice

Well in an attempt to avoid cleaning up the house, Matt and I did some work in the garden yesterday. We have two compost bins, an "active" one where we put our compost, and one that is busy decomposing the older compost so that it's ready to use in the garden. We thought the older compost would be ready to use, so I opened the lid to look in and see. Some brown little field mice scurried about taking almost no notice of me, although eventually they made a vague attempt to hide. Some of you may remember a small mice incident where we accidently carried a mouse into our garage and it eventually got into the house and it bit Matt on the thumb in his sleep and added to his already decided distrust/dislike of all things rodent (every time we go to the produce store he says NO we are not having a guinea pig!). So I calmly shut the lid and said "Matt I think we might not use the compost, it has a bit of a mouse problem". He was really quite calm, seeing as he hadn't actually had them jump out at him or anything. At any rate, it turned out to be an important warning. Because as he pulled up the salvia and the sage to make ready the garden bed for it's new season and so we could lay out some nice mice nesting material (ie lucerne) on top of the garden beds, a mouse jumped out at him and ran and hid in the other sage. I think he took it a lot better than he would have had we not already discovered the mice. So I did what anyone would do when an animal threatened a love one. I picked up the mallet and started hitting the sage and chasing the mouse with a mallet, but it escaped into the pumpkin and sweet potato patch, and it was all over then. Now don't get Matt wrong, apart from rodents he's quite good with creepy crawlies. Our garden beds are rife with big brown spiders (?wolf spiders?) which whenever you dig anywhere or move anything run out and we're happy to just ignore them. However I think he thinks the mice have a personal vendetta against him (due to his job as a biological scientist sacrificing rodents on the altar of knowledge). Anyway Matt and I (mostly Matt) have concocted a cunning plan to deal with them (like something out of Tom and Jerry or some movie from the mouse's perspective where the humans trying to kill them start getting more and more creative and ridiculous) which if my friend comes over this morning, I shall do my best to talk him into helping me carry out. I'm sure it will turn into a hilarious disaster (or a mouse slaughter) and I will blog about it after all is said and done. I shall keep you informed.

Discrimination

For the first time ever the other day I felt discriminated against for being a female. Well more specifically for being a pregnant female. A part-time job I was sort of semi-applying for rejected me on the basis of wanting to train someone who would be able to be with them consistently over the next 2-3 years. I know I should be completely outraged or something, but it seemed like a fair call - I will be taking 2-3 months off in just a few months. Even though I personally don't have a problem with it, it was kind of disappointing to miss out on something _already_ because of little Stripy!

Better

Am feeling better. Not quite as tired, and I only rarely vomit now. Feeling more positive about the baby plan. Am enjoying being back at my old job. No excuses for being slack, just haven't been spending as much time on the internet. I don't know when I'll get back to regular blogging. I've always been sporadic and I guess I'm just going through a lack of interest phase.