Of Mice and Me

We had a mouse problem in our house last week. We bought a humane mouse trap, the kind that traps the mouse in a box so you can release it later. So far, we've caught a mouse on three consectuive tries. The last one we found was on Sunday night, when we came home from the weekend. D took the mouse out in the backyard, removed the lid from the box, and threw the mouse out in the dark. He thought the mouse may have been dead.

The next morning, he went out to look for the dead mouse. It was not found. We are assuming the mouse was either dead and got eaten by a nocturnal creature, or it was stunned and when it came to, it scampered away.

Last night, we set the mouse trap again. This morning, no mouse. What are we learning from this?

1) We've been catching the same mouse each night.

• Mice are homing creatures. The one we've been catching is not very smart. It had to get caught several times before it learned to stayed away from the trap.
• If we had been catching the same mouse, our mouse died in the trap and got eaten up in the backyard overnight so it couldn't come back last night.
• Or it's playing with us, knowing we're too wimpy to intentionally kill it so it's staying away for one night to keep us guessing.
• We need to find that entrance to the house the mouse has been using

2) We've catching different mice each night.

• We've had a family of mice living with us. We finally got rid of the last one.
• If we've had a family of mice with us, there could be more that we don't know about. We are waiting for the babies to grow up to make their appearance known again.
• The mice stayed away last night because they are gathering friends for reinforcement to launch a mass attack.
• We need to bring in an exterminator.

We live downtown, where man has conquered nature. Yet, I run into raccoons and skunks on our street all the time. We've now had mice in the house. So even in a large metropolis such as ours, the living space for man and animals is only blurily separated. No matter what man does to claim land for his own, mother nature will always redistribute. Is that what this mouse episode is about, to make me see this?