I found icky little nasty wriggly weevils in my porridge this morning. And when I checked through the cupboards, they were everywhere. Porridge, muesli, bran, flour, custard powder, cocoa, soup mix, sugar, the lot. So there was a great binning of food and there will be a great buying of airtight containers very soon.
Meanwhile, while I cleaned out the cupboards I discovered that the one under the sink has become mouse party central. I've wiped it down with bleach, re-homed all the food (we only ever used to keep potatoes and onions under there anyway), and stopped up the hole temporarily. But I have no doubt they will make a new hole within, say, five minutes.
Geekman refuses to let me set traps, and I don't know if I could bring myself to, anyway. Mice are cute and furry. And I'm not poisoning them, because they'd take it back into the walls and stink the place out. So I'll have to wait until I can find one of those humane traps that catches them so you can release them outside again.
Meanwhile, the smell! I can't believe we never noticed it before. Even after the bleaching, the kitchen smells like a mouse's toilet.
Squeaky little bastards.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Wildlife. And not in a good way.
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6 Comments:
In my undergrad lab, we had mice. We used a humane trap, but it ended up being horribly inhumane as it was hard to check and no one did it often enough to prevent the mice from dying.
I hate weevils - they make us waste food! it hate them too as I can't use my storage pantry for cereals and stuff -- and I have no other real place to store that stuff. Weevils attacked my lovely banana nut organic pancake mix. Travesty.
I've never had a weevil problem or a mouse problem where I've lived before. Maybe I've just been lucky. I would have thought at least the mice would be less likely in the top storey of a large appartment block, but no.
And I'll make an extra effort to check the trap frequently, if/when we get one. Thanks for the tip!
I think the weevils are worse, though. I was wondering if maybe I could just store ALL our food under the sink and the mice could eat the weevils... Then we could borrow a cat to eat the mice... But it might get a bit "I know an old lady" after a while.
Ewwww. Poor you!
Oh yeah! A cat! In my last apartment in "hippycollegetown," I occasionally got mice because my apartment used to be a garage and wasn't converted well, and was right level with the ground. There was a huge garden right out my back door, and a *lot* of wildlife (frogs, bunnies, deer, etc). So, outside mice sometimes came in, and the kitten would catch them and just run around the house with them, but never killed them. I would then catch her and force her to let them go, and they scampered - stunned and dizzy - off to the garden.
I don't want her to kill mice - but she can kill any bugs - I odn't believe in killing them myself, but I'm very into natural selection.
Speaking of, "The Amazing Race" went to Darwin, AU last night - have you been there?
Sorry, no. I really haven't seen much of Australia yet. I've been to Sydney and Melbourne and Cairns, and various little towns in a 200 km radius of this city, but that's about all.
My cat used to collect these enormous German grasshopper creatures. They were seriously as long as your hand. She would bring them in and stuff them into potplants around the house, where they would sit happily for a while, with her guarding them, and then when they did try to escape, she would pounce on them and drag them back to their pot.
She seemed to have a little game going where she tried to collect as many grasshoppers in a pot as possible, so would scurry outside to get another one, and try and get back with it in time to prevent the first one from leaving.
Her record was six.
That is hilarious!
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