"if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room"

Friday, February 3, 2012

Mouse!

One of the "facts of life" here in the giggle weeds of Texas is the presence of field mice. To be fair to Texas though we have had the occasional mouse find it's way into our 5er no matter what state we are parked in. We have heard all the "fixes" to prevent mice from getting in and I try to seal up any holes I find in the underside of the 5th wheel but the practical matter is these things can get through such small openings it is almost impossible to keep them out. We bought moth balls and spread them around because we heard they would repel mice ...... didn't work. The best thing I have found is the old fashioned, spring loaded, board traps baited with a little peanut butter. I have 2 of these set in the basement and have gotten about 2 mice per month. That was until this week! Maybe they sense we are leaving and want to relocate with us but we have had a virtual mouse invasion here at the gate. I check the traps every day and they are usually empty, this week though I have caught 5! That is more than the first 2 months combined :-0 !
Luckily we have had no activity in our living area, they seem to prefer the basement. That was until last night. We were sitting watching TV and I saw a mouse run across the living room floor right next to Rudee who was sitting with her feet up in the recliner. Not thinking I yelled "Mouse!" and instantly regretted it thinking Rudee would jump up and run out the door screaming! I guess this gate guard life is toughening her up some because she just looked at me and said "get a trap". :-)
I already had one trap set under our desk "just in case" but never had any activity on it. I set another one up near the table where we saw the mouse go. Fast forward to this morning and both traps inside are still untouched :-(. I went outside and found the little bugger in one of the basement traps. I told Rudee I got it but I'm not sure she believes it is the same one. I, on the other hand, am sure it is because he/she still had that same stupid smirk on its face it had when it ran across the carpet in living room taunting me! Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it! :-)
There is a chance for rain and thunderstorms late today and into Saturday so we decided to go ahead and hook the semi up to the 5th wheel. The truck just does not do very good on wet ground when there is no weight on the back wheels and we didn't want to have any problems trying to hook on in the caliche' mud. We are slowly getting things ready to travel again, only 3 more days and we'll have some time off. I'll keep you posted.

3 comments:

  1. Similar mouse experience here. We're trying one ot those "sonic electronic" thingy's currently. The jury is still out on that though. Enjoy your time off.

    ReplyDelete
  2. With two dogs I hope we don't have that problem. I will buy some traps just incase.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We plan to travel with a couple of kitties - they should help keep the rodent population down.

    ReplyDelete