A few weeks ago the Rottler exterminator came out to do the maintenance for our plan, and she was very personable, so I mentioned that we seemed to have mice. I knew this because:
- Intermittent mouse poop in basement
- Noisy mice in walls
- Goldie caught three mice in the basement
The woman set out an outdoor trap and came back a few weeks later.
It was a joy to watch her work. She was on the case. You could see the deductive reasoning at play. I thought I had worked out some things, but I don't know the ways of the rodents.
For example, I thought I had figured out where the mice were coming in: the external dryer vent. Just a short jaunt under the laundry room floorboards, and then drop down through the insulation to the basement, have a poop on top of the storage shelves, pee on the dead cat's stuff.
She looked at the same setup and said, "You know, I see that you feed the wildlife. Where do you store the food?"
"In the garage, but it's in heavy bags. Gary once found a tiny hole but it was only big enough to get out one half of one nut."
"Let me see."
She walked out to the garage, and went immediately to the corner that abuts the laundry room, the same spot in the garage where we hade once found a hole twenty five years earlier. I remember because we moved a big storage unit to block the hole. That strategy must have been effective, because she moved the unit and found a different hole. And a lot of debris, including peanut shells. She stuffed the hole with steel wool from her own supply. (We had bought our own to use when we found the hole ourselves, hahaha, as if.)
While she was setting traps I said, "So, I'll see dead mice in the traps, and we won't hear the mice in the walls."
"If you can hear it dollars to donuts that's squirrels. I noticed you have a tree limb that touches your house. Squirrels are just walking around up there trying to get in to your soffit and gnawing on the metal gutter."
It was truly satisfying, because I felt like Gary and I were almost there, but then she came in like a forensic psychologist and knew the mouse and squirrel motivations.
Time to saw back the tree limb and put the peanuts in bins, I guess. Feel a little pity for the mice and squirrels.
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