Vermin!

Been a bit silent on the blog recently, and here's why... we had mice! Ewwwwwwww!!!!!
In fact, the mice are just the last in a long line of vermin that have invaded our home (or in one instance our holiday accommodation)...

First, there were rats in our roof, about 7 or 8 years ago, not long after we moved into our house. Ratsak sorted them out. Then about two years ago, we had cockroaches in kitchen. We had 'em sprayed and eventually located the nest in the base of the kettle!!!!

We have a minor silverfish problem - they keep appearing in bath tub! No idea how they get there, but I am guessing they fall through the ceiling fan out of the roof space.

We have seen numerous red-back spiders in the garden, one ventured under the door and into our laundry which was a bit scary. But even more worrying was the one we found recently on our stove! It had made a web on the trivets!!  

About a year ago, I saw a single, solitary mouse in our study/library. [Though I now know that there is no such thing as a single, solitary mouse... read on.] We set some traps but caught nothing and saw no further signs of it.

Then there was the time that a sparrow fell down the kitchen flue and ended up stuck in the rangehood. We got that one out and put some mesh over the top, but a few weeks later another sparrow got through the mesh and ended up in the same predicament. Both birds were extracted and survived the ordeal.

Another bird incident on April 7th this year when a Myna bird came down chimney in our study and pooed all over everything. After finishing this massive clean up, we were well and truly ready for a nice, relaxing holiday in Bendigo over the Easter long weekend, but it was not to be... on our second-last night, a Butcherbird came down the chimney in the bedroom of our holiday house. Curiously bringing someone's packet of the Pill with it - probably collected for it's shiny-ness.

May 2nd: back at home and all had been relatively normal for most of a week until we spotted a mouse, this time hanging around in our dining/living room. Eventually caught it in a trap, but only by the back leg, so then DeepSpice had to euthanase it (cervical dislocation, not fun). With that one gone, it soon became apparent that there was at least one more, as the baits kept disappearing out of other traps. I even saw a mouse carefully extract bait from one of the traps and then sit on top of the trap to eat it! And so began the War on Mice. A strategies included:

• Sealing up all the holes in our house with acrylic fillers and expanding foam. 
• Making patches to go over holes in the back of our kitchen cabinets leftover from when the lazy cabinet-maker was installing them and drilled huge holes for the electrical cables and pipes and then didn't patch them. DeepSpice made patches from plates of stainless steel that he had hoarded for years. (So now on top of having mice, I have no grounds for telling him to throw out all the clutter in the garage. Sigh.)  
• Laying more traps around the house overnight (and packing them up each morning so that Thumper didn't stick her fingers in them).
• Laying baits up in the roof space and monitoring these every day or two. 
• Lots and lots of cleaning with bleach where the mice had been, then sprinkling bicarbonate soda powder around so we'd be able to see if they came back. The bicarb also helped a bit with the disgusting smell.  
• Being super-vigilant in cleaning up every speck of food in the house, so there is nothing around for the mice to eat. No easy task with messy, small children about. 

We are now at the end of week 3 in the War, and we seem to be winning. No sign of mice inside our house anymore, so it seems like we have successfully found and sealed up all the holes. And DeepSpice reported this morning that there is no sign of the baits in the roof still being eaten. Unfortunately this probably means there are dead mice in our roof, but at least they're now down here with us.

So hopefully we can now relax a little, especially since today was meant to be The Rapture. I am very pleased to have been left behind so I can enjoy living in our mouse-free house again. I just hope that we don't get a post-Rapture apocalypse now, because I don't quite feel up to dealing with a zombie plague.
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