A mammoth undertaking

The problem with using mouse poison is that the noise from the creatures gets louder for several days before it all goes quiet. I believe that the poison dehydrates the rodents, which makes them clumsy and hence noisier. So I was pleased that I was away on business immediately after Tim had been here to deal with the mice in the loft, as I hoped that would give time for the poison to take effect and the noise to cease before I got back home.

When Tim went up into the loft to investigate the latest infestation, he found that the bait was still undisturbed, exactly where he had left it last time. And that was despite me hearing mice tap-dancing away for several nights. It seemed as though they hadn’t yet found the doped grain. He added some more for good luck, and also put down a new sort of bait which he’s not used here before.  Rather than poisoned grain, it was a waxy cube about 4cm on a side, which he said the mice like to chew on. He put some of those up in the loft-hatch next to my bedroom. He did warn me though that it might take several more days for the mice to find all the bait, but that when they did there was more than enough up there to have a positively terminal effect.

Unfortunately, it seems he was right on the timings (he usually is, when it comes to the habits and expected behaviour of vermin!). When I got back from Hampshire it wasn’t to a totally quiet and empty house as I had expected. It sounded as though something the size of a cat, with extremely long fingernails, was dragging itself around the loft space overnight, directly above my bed. I know that things always sound louder at night, even more so now that I’m on my own, but this really was nasty. Logic says that it was only an unhappy mouse, but it sounded much more like a ghoul or bogeyman in my loft! I’m not superstitious (too much of a scientist!) but if I were I might think that it was the ghost of all the mice I’ve poisoned over the last dozen years coming back to haunt me!

It has finally gone quiet now, so I think the mice have been vanquished. At least for this time. They’ll be back! Living out in the country as I do, they are an inescapable fact of life. Tim says that he wants to come back in about two months to keep an eye on the situation and top up the bait as necessary, so that there is plenty there as the nights start drawing in for the autumn and the mice start moving back inside.