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.