I was topping up the bird feed at the weekend and noticed little random tracks in the snow. On closer inspection they traced back to mouse holes in the dry stone walls.
So I placed a peanut in the shell in each hole. My three year old daughter put some little branches off conifers next to each one so that they had a Christmas tree.
I blame 'Muppets Christmas Carol'
am I really soft
oh yes, they'll be in your kitchen before you know it
Vermin.
Don't do it. Cute as they are, they'll soon be in the house being incontinent all over the place.
Vermin.
Don't do it. Mice are not nice.
Sphincterless little disease carriers. Keep away!
get a cat!
Mice.
They will be much needed food for owls.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bradford/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_9308000/9308844.stm
i think it is sensible. in the several thousand years mice have been around they have probably never seen snow, and won't survive with out us feeding them peanuts.
There were some really weird footprints leading up to the back door of my house this morning. About 5cm long, 2 cm across 20 cm apart. Fox maybe ? Looks like it wandered up to the door, paced around a bit then buggered off. Def not Cat prints and I am unfamiliar with local mammals. Or some crazy big mice ??
Erm - mice outside will not be house mice will they?
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"Give us a peanut"
Nothing sadder than a homeless house-mouse.
Erm - mice outside will not be house mice will they?
They're all house mice once they figure out there's food and warmth.
OK I'll bite - Corbett ?? The only Corbetts I know are 1. Ronnie and 2. Mountains over 500 metres in height, and think that might have left bigger footprints.
In response to the original post, it depends on what it is you're feeding them. If it's stuff like ground up glass or deadly poison, then no, you're not soft, you're a nasty piece of work, actually. Good day sir, and I hope santa's watching you, naughty bad boy!
Please continue to feed the mice, when they work out where the food is coming from and miss you out of the loop and go direct to the kitchen I can share all my top tips for getting rid of the little buggers…
Snap dead trap bait, expanding foam and where to use it, what to do when you wife/children are scared $h!tless when they hear them running around above the ceiling in you living room, where to buy kitchen Tupperware, etc, etc
or
Take heed and instead of peanuts buy some poison and save yourself time and heartache
You were right with 1. They tend to live in burrows near hawthorn. Do you have any hawthorn in your garden?
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"I want a peanut too"
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"I want a peanut too"
Hi poppa - I really don't know if I have Hawthorn, I'm from the colonies and all the birds and plants are different, we had no mammals until Kupe arrived with his canoes and the only nocturnal visitors I can identify are possums. Quite excited to think there is something living in my garden and would explain some recent unusual Cat behaviour.
Don't do it!
I'm part way through a mice slaughtering campaign. They seem to be everywhere at the moment - I found two trying to sneak in over the door threshold yesterday.
When I googled 'mice in the attic', STW forum was about eighth on the page. There must be some strange synchronicity between mountain bikes and mice.
Marko
You should see what they did to my best SIDI's!
Our cat peels them from the neck down. Good job too.
Thanks for the feedback it is kind of what I expected. I had been cutting wood all day at -6 and the cold had probably got to my head.
We live in a rural place with a large wooded, orchard & dry stone walled garden so I imagine mice have lived there for ever. They can see this as a xmas present to stop as many dying in this weather, hopefully won't lead to a population explosion!
In six years we have had one mouse in the kitchen and one in the loft, both caught in a humane trap (see always been soft).
I once had a friend who put a snap trap in the void under his floor, he heard it snap and then a few seconds later he could hear it dragging along under the floor for about 5 minutes. That was a funny story.
Evicting wild animals, doing you no harm whatsoever, from their little home, and at Christmas too 🙁
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The furry little barstools cross my threshold, they cross the line from being 'wild animals' to being 'wild animals that are considerably thinner about the throat.'
Cruel gits they are still animals which are A an important part of the food chain and B should be allowed to exist on this planet just like the human vermin does .
I have no issues with them existing on the planet, so long as they do so out side of my house. They excrete everywhere and breed like religious fundamentalists, if I catch one running across my bed there'll be a sharp crack, a squeak and a faint whiff of peanut butter.