The Mouse In The House

I still remember it as if it happened only yesterday.

After a long time trying to survive outdoors looking for any source of food, I finally saw it.  A small opening the size of a nickel!  This human who lived inside, he was able to seal all cracks and openings before, or so we all thought.  So when I was out foraging for food for me and my young ones, a sudden gush of air signalled to me something good was going to happen.  Then there it was, the opening I was looking for.  I approached it with great joy.  Finally, I am inside!

A few weeks later, I have been crawling around each night inside this huge house.  It is a luxury.  Food is abundant.  I can have my pick.  From fresh bread, cookies, fruits, candies, and nuts.  Plus, unlike their pets, I have the freedom to choose where I go. 

Humans and I have a special relationship.  They buy the food, they place it on the table and leave it there, and I go up the table to enjoy the bounties.  It is a give and take relationship indeed. 

However, there are times when they see me, they fear me.  I do not understand why.  I do give them diseases like the rat – bite fever, leptospirosis, hantavirus, and the bubonic plague.  They say those diseases are deadly.  But what is all the fuss about dying?  Every day I see my buddies die due to poisoning, but we go on our happy lives.  Why can’t they be the same?

Well, as a gesture of goodwill from myself, I will give you some tips on how to prevent my fellow rodents from entering YOUR house like the way I did with the humans here.  Who knows better my friends than a fellow mouse, right?  Here are the things we like and do not like:

1. We can enter holes as small as your nickel.  Our bodies are so small and flexible, a tiny hole is all we look for.
2. We hate clean houses.  Food is the main reason we go to your houses anyway.  Remove it from our reach, and we are better off somewhere else.
3. We have problems getting through sealed plastic or metal containers.  If you put your food in there, then that is going to be a problem for us.
4. We always crawl right beside the walls, because we are uncomfortable crawling in open spaces.  Our moms taught us that, and we will teach that to our offsprings too.  Now that you know it, the space beside the walls is the perfect place to place traps.  We are always fools for baits like peanut butter or dried fruit.

Here is another tip.  We are very afraid of those guys from this company, they call them Lake Norman Pest Control Company.  Those are real bad guys; they are terrorists.  All of us here in the mice community hate them.  Wherever you are, whatever you do, please don’t call them!  They will terminate us all.

Well, that’s it.  I got to go back to our nest.  See you again!