Gnawing pains

'Twas the night before errrr....Friday,

when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring,

not even a mouse;



Hah! Not in this house! I was sitting here quietly last night, OH had gone to bed early and The Lurchers were settled and sleeping. I was working at the computer which is in the hall, when I heard scratching noises coming from the sitting room to my right. Thinking Chaz the Hamster was awake I went in to say hello and give her some fruit. Oh, not Chaz, she was still sleeping, being more of a 4 in the morning kind of girl. Back at my desk the noises started again and I just couldn't locate them.



Having spent 10 minutes crawling around the floor and shining the torch under the dresser, from where the noises appeared to be coming, it dawned on me. Our usual autumnal visitors were back. Yep, mice! Our ground floor flat is quite old and there are plenty of nooks and crannies for them to get in. Did you know that mice can dislocate their shoulders to get through the tiniest of gaps?



I would be quite happy to have them around, they're pretty harmless after all, except for the fact that they will chew things. Over the years I have lost several items of clothing from the bottom of my clothes cupboard to mice searching for nesting material. And I once lifted a brand new bag of hamster food out of the cupboard to have it trail out of the bag behind me through the very neatly nibbled hole. Food on tap, no wonder they come back very year!



Last year was quite amusing though. The telephone in the sitting room has a long lead so we can move about with the phone...yes I know we should get a cordless but hey, a long lead does the trick....and when we got home from a weekend away, the phone was on the floor and the lead seemed to be disappearing under the sofa. Moving the sofa out of the way, we discovered that the mice had pulled it down through a hole in the floorboards. Unchewed, I could only assume they wished to tap into our phone line to call the relatives. I did wonder when we'd find a note asking for a broadband connection please. They are quite cheeky mice too...one year I was in the sitting room of an evening when a movement caught my eye, Mr Mouse was quite happily trotting up the hall with a dog biscuit in his mouth which he had purloined from the dog bowl!



However, the problem now arises as to how to deal with them. OH is in favour of the old-fashioned mouse trap, baited with chocolate, which apparently they prefer to cheese... we have discerning mice in this house you understand. Either that or Mrs Mouse suffers from the same cravings that us human females do. I'm not comfortable with these traps and would rather use humane ones but the year we did, we were more overrun with the little beggars than ever. It didn't seem to matter how far from the flat we released them, they all came back, or maybe word got round that this was a safe house. Poison was suggested this year, but I've vetoed that one completely. If they have to die then it will at least be quick and painless.



Any other tips for humane removal of meeces would be most welcome.