Weird Christmas Traditions, Down Here on the Farm

Last week, there was a mouse in the house.

I was beginning to fear that might be the case, given the cats’ sudden interest in whatever they thought was going on behind the closet under the stairs (the back of said closet is one of those concertina-type folding vinyl doors which, when slid open, lets you into the little space where the water from the well comes into the house, where the pressure storage tank is, and where the hot water heater is.  It’s pretty clean, dry, and tidy, so not super-creepy, as some such places are.)

There was a mouse in the house early this past summer, but I think that was my fault, as I’d left the outer door into the sunroom open so that pSir (that would be Psymon the preternaturally clever cat) would let himself in.  He loves to go outside, and to pSay that the machinations he indulges in, in order to outwit me and pSneak outside are not highly effective, would be a pFib.

When Psymon went back in the sunroom that evening, I closed the outer door to the sunroom and opened the door between the sunroom and the bedroom.  I think the mouse had pSnuck into the sunroom at some point, and that’s how he got in the house.  I rounded him up, took him up the road and let him go.

I’m not totally sure how this most recent border-crosser got inside.  Ever since our very serious mouse infestation (which began in 2010 or so, when we took all the original siding off the house and–unknowingly–opened up several routes in), I’ve re-sided the house, paying particular attention to potential points of entry, the back porch has been replaced, the entire downstairs has been remodeled, and I thought the place was pretty rodent-proof.

So I don’t really know what happened.  I got under the stairs and had a good look around, and discovered a hole, about 5/8″ across which–I think–could potentially connect (with a bit of imagination) to the underfloor area that is a crawlspace and not a slab, so perhaps that’s it.  (He was a tiny mouse).  So I filled that up with foam.

He was a cutie pie.  The cats woke me up at about 2AM, doing that “we’re on patrol” thing that cats do.  When I entered the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, I heard “week, week,” coming from behind the door.  Sure enough, there he was.

Twenty fruitless minutes of chasing him round the bathroom and the bedroom ensued, after which I went upstairs and made a cup of tea, leaving the cats to it.  When I went back downstairs, the mouse was sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor, and Psymon and Poot were staring interestedly at him.

This time, I got an empty margarine tub on top of him, slid a piece of cardboard underneath, drove him some way up the road, spoke firmly to him, and threw him out of the car on his little mouse ear. Then I went back to bed.

At the moment, I have three different sorts of traps in the space behind the closet, only one of them lethal.  If any mouse is too stupid to enter the humane trap, and he insists on committing suicide, then good riddance. So far, though, no takers in any of them.  That’s encouraging, but not dispositive.  Perhaps more so is the fact that I opened up the vinyl door this morning (I took the lethal baited trap away first) and the cats are showing no interest in what’s going on in there.

Fingers crossed. And the fervent hope that this won’t be like the Christmas from a bygone year where we sat watching It’s a Wonderful Life as the mice ran back and forth on the living room floor in front of us, while we hoped (to no avail) that at some point they’d stop and serenade us like the chorus in the movie Babe. (The pig, not the baseball player.)

I really don’t want to go down that road again.

Just now, I put the sheep in the barn.  There were two tiny mice in one of the hay feeders.  I paused to congratulate them on their choice of accommodation.

Then there’s this:

This morning I went out to do the last of my Christmas grocery shopping, and returned to find this large plastic tub on the floor of what I call my “utility room,” AKA the “dogs’ den.”  When I left, the tub was on a shelf, and it was almost full of (rather expensive) doggie treats.

The shelf it was on is this one (see the “doggie face sticker,” to see exactly where this tub of dog treats was):

That shelf is not quite six feet off the floor. Somehow, they got to it, got it down, opened the lid (which requires turning it while holding onto the container), and ate all the treats.  The only other casualty which made it onto the floor was the scrubby sponge, which had been on the back of the sink next to the little scrubbing brush, which they knocked over.

Too late to capture the escapade on video, but perhaps I need to install a camera somewhere.

I’m pretty sure they had help.  Imagining a sort of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader move, with Odo (150lbs) standing staunchly on the floor, Xuxa (120lbs) standing on top of him, probably with her front paws on the sink back, and Psymon standing on her and doing the dirty deed and actually knocking the tub onto the floor.

Pretty sure pSir was in there pSomewhere.  Because (AFAIK) he’s the only one of the three who knows how to remove a pScrew-on lid:

The whole thing is so reminiscent of the years-ago time that my previous generation of Great Pyrenees, Levi and Xena, celebrated Christmas by eating my Quality Street chocolates.

I’d bought a large tub of them. Yes, for Christmas. That’s what Brits do (or did).  I’d hidden them from myself on a shelf high-up in that same utility room.  One day (channeling AOC), “some dogs did something.”  But they hid the evidence of their misdeed, and I didn’t notice.  Until a day or two later when I was out pooper-scooping and wondering why there was so much pretty reflective material in the…umm…matter I was scooping up.

Turns out that Levi and Xena had knocked a two-pound tub of Quality Street chocolates to the floor, had eaten the lot, including the wrappers, had shoved the empty tub behind the washing machine, and had–expressing complete innocence–gone about their lives.

I had a moment’s panic (dogs and chocolate), then did the math as it related to the bulk of the dogs, the amount of actual chocolate in the candies, and the time that had already passed.  And all ended well.

I don’t think such a story could be told today.  Quality Street has gone woke, and its wrappers, which were–at the time Levi and Xena indulged themselves–gloriously Christmassy, with shiny foil wrapped in colorful and shiny cellophane, are now some sort of dull and ecologically sound sustainable wax-coated paper (it’s probably even digestible) with no excitement at all.  I didn’t even buy them this year. But even if I had, and even if–unbeknownst to me–the dogs had consumed them all, I’m not sure I would have noticed much of the inevitable outcome. Perhaps “The Case of the Disappearing Quality Street Chocolates” would have entered family Christmas legend, as with that of some friends of mine whose family lost–about thirty years ago–a giant Toblerone that the mom had bought for the kids for Christmas.  It’s never been found, and its mysterious disappearance has become an annual joke.

Hmmm……

Merry Christmas, all!