Sunday, September 11, 2005

I hate those meeces to pieces

The first ever pet I had - at three years old - was a little white mouse. About two weeks after I was given her she produced 11 little pink (but turned white) babies. So mice don't particularly bother me, in that I don't jump when I see one, and will quite happily hold one.

But there are limits.

It's raining again and avoiding the housework I went to carry out some rearrangement of the shed that holds horse gear and feed. Well overdue rearrangement I might add.

When I was a pony mad child /teenager I had a miserly father who refused to buy me any horse gear. Now that is not STRICTLY true, I had more than adequate and often indulgent parenting, but I ended up with a complex, brought on by sheer jealousy of those uppity little girls at ponyclub who had every single piece of horsegear ever invented, and a horse float, while my horse had the basics and we had to hitch rides if we wanted to go anywhere that wasn't within hacking distance.

The result of this is I have been buying horse stuff ever since, and the collection is now rather large. In fact there are 27 horse covers for three horses - two of which would probably never notice if they never wore a cover at all. So this is the level of indulgence I have reached now I am in possession of a reasonable amount of disposable income. This is probably not good when I contemplate it.

So I've been down in the shed sifting through covers, and saddles, and bridles, and halters, and the 20 lead ropes there appears to be, and grooming gear and .... well most things really. From the mess there are a large number of mice living in there. I only saw two - or maybe three - live ones though. One that was living in the lining of a cover in a carefully chewed hole lined with bits of hay, I flicked him or her outside, and the one that was living in a saddle blanket that ran up my arm, over my shoulder and down my back to escape - which sort of produced the eeeekkkk factor I don't normally have.

Mission accomplished and some order emerging from the mess I went to get some lunch leaving the burmese on guard in the shed. He turned up about five minutes later with a live mouse (not sure if this is one of my originals or a new one he found) which he promptly let go beside the freezer. So that's where it is - under the freezer.

I found a couple of dead ones too. Husband suggested they died from shock at finding so much food in one place.

My next mission - to find and set some mouse traps.

2 comments:

wino said...

Already living in one cover lining Clods. I have put all the synthetics into a big chest/toolbox thing now. Hopefully it is mouse proof!

wino said...

Ick Ick Ick. Out there tonight mixing the feeds, I put copra to soak in a bucket of water - like copra soup, use it to wet the feed. So I'm pouring this out and it has a lump in it.. turns out to be a dead mouse - must have fallen in and drowned. Poor old Kiwi had mouse flavoured food (though I did fish the mouse out). Think I had better buy some poison much as I dislike it.