Snappy Times at the Hungry Mouse Cafe

I have a general live and let live attitude towards nature.  Almost all the fish I catch get released.  Bats that find their way into my home are gently escorted out.  When chipmunks become a garden nuisance I safely live trap them, take them across the river and release them.  I think they race me home.

But I do draw the line on carpenter ants and mice when either is inside my house or our up north cabin.  Ants will eventually eat your building.  Mice, well there's Hanta Virus, the fact that they harbor deer ticks that carry Lyme disease.  And all those little droppings.  Everywhere.

So it's a running battle.  One in which my grandson is a loyal foot soldier.  Mice outside:  good.  Mice inside: trap 'em.

Recently he spied the likely entry point from garage to domicile and we happily worked together to seal it off.  Since then there have been no mice caught in the house.  But they seem to still be present in the attached garage in abundance.  

We had a puppy visitor recently so had to do something other than strew traps about randomly.  We decided to modify a cardboard box as The Hungry Mouse Café.

As you can see it has two doors and considerable decoration.  The little brown ovals are drawn on mouse droppings.  We figure they'd just follow the trail right on in.

This was originally a box of "Cheesecake" frozen treats, which seems a nice bit of advertising.  Note the five star rating and the peanut butter pie.  Note also that there are three loaded mouse traps inside.

So how did it work out?  Well, I came back a few days later and found a full house.  Looks as if a very wild time was had after hours at the Hungry Mouse Café!  Ugh...what a party.

Update.  Since I wrote the above, we found a little niche that the mice must have been using to gain entry.   With that blocked the number of mice caught in the garage went to zero.  Oddly, two weeks on there was a single mouse caught in the house.  I figure he was a lone survivor who had been wandering in what must have seemed to him an empty post rodent Apocalypse.  Mice are not particularly deep thinkers but he must have wondered:  "Hey, in all the stories I've heard its us and the cockroaches who rule after the humans are all gone.  Now, they are still here and I'm the last of my kind.....what gives?"