Mousecapades

See the red thing in this photo? That’s the shape of a mouse hole! I was just as shocked as you are now to discover that it’s not a cute little half-oval cavity in your wall. It’s an inconspicuous gap between your air-conditioning unit (with centralised cooling and heating) and your floor.

I was sitting in bed the other night watching tv when I saw something moving through the corner of my eye. I focussed on it and saw it was a tiny gray mouse. I yelled, “Hey!” like it was a burglar or something and screamed. It looked at me for two seconds and ran back into the hole you see plugged up in that picture.

For about 10 minutes I sat up in bed, frozen, staring at the hole, my heart pounding, imagining the mouse (100 times smaller than I) on the other side of the airconditioning’s metal cover, staring back, also shaking. It was only slightly amusing.

Then I thought, “Crap! It wants my food!” So I grabbed all the snacks in my living room and put them in the fridge. After that I crawled back into bed and continued to stare at the hole. What next?

I googled mouse behaviour. The first article I came across said to block out mice with wire mesh. The closest thing to that that I had was a dishwashing sponge. When I went to get it, I found it was more like a plastic scratchy material but it had to do. So I cut it up and stuffed it into the hole to close the gap.

Now I’m working on the assumption that mice, like electric currents, always choose the path of least resistance and the mouse won’t try to push or chew it’s way back in. It’s been five days. So far so good.