Action Time

We don't normally keep these in the kitchen, but yes, we have an irritating problem! Mice in the house.

I had my suspicions last week when we found minute splinters of plastic from the cap of a tub of vegetable cooking oil in one of the kitchen cupboards.

Fortunately anything like food in packets, mostly pasta and rice were already in rigid containers or had been moved from the last time we had the pesky little visitors. So overnight preparations were made and suspicions confirmed when one of these traps was sprung, but without positive result.

So a back up trap was set up, baited with peanut butter. And hey presto two nights later we had captured a full size one. Not a tiny field mouse, but one much larger.

Quite regularly over the past few weeks we had seen a neighbour's cat proudly marching home from our garden with a mouse in its mouth. But that was from the garden. We had even seen the cat playing with and tormenting one on a garden border.

But in the house itself. That's a different matter!

We know from past experience that mice never come unaccompanied. There has to be another one somewhere. Yet so far it has not been tempted neither by chocolate, cheese or peanut butter. Marmite has been recommended!

When we had our own cat I do not recall suffering these problems. For the last few years we have resisted replacements for our much loved pets of the time.

Perhaps time for second thoughts?