|
 On 02/28/2013 at 12:01 AM by Ranger1 See More From This User » |
This is another of my 1up blogs, I was planning on doing an original for my first Ranger Stuff entry on PixlBit, but things come up. Ser, I'm posting this in Normandy's honor.
EDIT: Sorry about the trap confusion, I forget not everyone lives in the boondocks and deals with nuisance animals. This is a Hav-A-Hart trap:
Originally posted 5/25/06
And I don't mean Mickey, either! We've got a bit of a rodent problem at our HQ in the park at the moment. It all started last Saturday, when I went to grab my leftover half of a cream cheese brownie for my coffee break. There were little holes chewed all through the plastic and large mousie nibbles taken out of the brownie under the holes in the plastic. Not to mention the tell-tale little brown mousie droppings on the counter next to the brownie. Grr! Ranger Tami now very angry! So I went looking for our mouse-sized Hav-a-Hart trap. Hmm... no trap in any of the usual places. What to do? Well, I felt it constituted an emergency, so I called the boss at home and asked where the trap was. Bad Andy! He took it home to catch little mousies at his house! Leaving my brownie undefended.
We set the trap on Sunday, caught and released one on Monday. Then a second one yesterday. Cute little brown mousies with big eyes, big ears and long fuzzy tails. I took the one yesterday for a lovely long drive in the country and released it near a farm, but in the field, where it belonged. I didn't re-set the trap, though. At lunch time, I told our new crew member that I was going in to town to get a sandwich, did she want to come with? She said yes, as she finds the cabin to be quite creepy when she's by herself and the little critters scurry around like they own the place. No sooner did she say that, when a mouse ran under my descending foot and over the top of my other foot and behind the stove. "Eek!" we both shrieked and jumped at the same time. Now, mice don't usually bother me, but I just wasn't expecting one to leap out under my feet on cue like that! After the adreneline rush subsided, we both left for town, giggling like crazy. We got back with our sandwiches, and I went in, yelling: "ok, mouse, here I come!" And had another one (or maybe the same one, who can tell?) zoom past in the same spot as the first one. New person #1 heard me yell "you little bastard!" at it and dissolved into hysterical giggles out in her car. At that point, I made a little "mouse crossing" sign, stuck it in the middle of the kitchen floor and went to get the trap. Coming back into the office/living room, yet another mouse (or the same mouse a third time) made an appearance, racing into a dark corner and trying to hide. It disappeared into a small hole under the heater that some wires go into and I said: "AHA! Gotcha now!" and set the trap. New person said: "I bet we catch one before the end of the day," just as the trap shut. And lo! We had ourselves a little baby mousie in the trap. I drove this one down to the same spot as the one I had released earlier and let him go, too.
We left and went into the park to do rangerish sorts of things and left the sign in the middle of the floor for Andy to find when he got back from picking up our new computer. He opened the door, saw the sign, and right next to the sign, saw mouse #4 (or was it really only #2?) and burst into laughter, scaring little baby mousie #2 into the trap. I dumped that one off in the same spot as the previous two.
Now, today, Andy and I were in the office talking about the weekend's schedule and what he wants accomplished prior to the weekend. I look over and see yet another mouse sitting between Andy's feet! Mousie realizes he has been noticed and escapes behind the file cabinet. Andy goes and gets the trap out of the bathroom closet and puts it back on the Ho Chi Mouse Trail. Another mouse makes an appearance from under the heater, and pauses to have some breakfast, sitting in front of the trap. File Cabinet Mouse get curious about what Heater Mouse is eating, so he shows up again. He discovers that there is peanut butter in the trap and enters, but doesn't sit on the trigger. I grab two sheets of paper and sneak over, blocking one side of the trap with one sheet and scooting Heater Mouse into the trap with the other. One of them runs over the trigger and the doors close. Two mice for the price of one! New person #2 gets to take these little guys on their drive in the country and drops them off with what we assume is the rest of the extended mousie family.
So, four days and five mice later, I'm curious to see what I find in the trap tomorrow. Maybe I should start banding them or something. How about a mousie-cam? A "guess the number of mice in the cabin" game? The possibilities are many, probably as many as the mice!
Aww, thanks n_n
I'll admit I got really worried when I read the word "trap", bit it's good that these mice got to keep living their lives happily (hopefully) in a field. The deer mouse that somehow got into the pet store met an unfortunate end via a glue trap. That hurt me quite a bit. Those things are insidious >_<#
I am a firm believer in live and let live, even if they were nibbling on my cream cheese brownie! Glue traps are evil. Poison is even worse. Glue traps are just plain cruel, but poison gets into the food chain and can kill predators like owls and hawks that eat the mice. So we are Hav-A-Hart all the way at my current park. Andy says that the mice remind him of the mice in that board game Mousetrap.
I too thought "trap" meant this:
and then I thought "Hav-a-Hart" was an ironically cruel name, but then I understood, and it wound up being a cute story. lol
Sorry about the confusion, Joe. I added a pic for future readers.
I find it weird that as I'm reading this blog there is a ad for Terminix that features a rodent.
Ad sense "reads" key words and then inserts an ad it thinks will be of interest to the reader. Kind of creepy, and I'd block them, except that the ads generate revenue for the site.
I didn't know about Have a Hart mouse traps. That's pretty cool. I've had mouse problems when I lived in cities like Philly and New York. My insane friend caught a mouse in NEw York and decided to keep him as a pet. That did not work out.
Yeah, I once tried to keep a deer mouse that we caught in a Hav-a-Hart when I was younger. She wasn't very happy and just curled up in a corner and wouldn't eat, so we set her free. I have a feeling that may not be the kind of thing you were talking about, though.
no, he kept it in a container and it hid all the time, and then one day it jumped out and escaped, thank god.
then he bought a hamster. 
We had a rat move in for awhile. My cat was scared of it. lol. Seems like your mice are working in concert though. Dun dun dun! Guard your brownies Tami, watch them VERY CAREFULLY. There are rodent ninjas nearby!
Was it a feral or a domestic rat? If it was a feral, I don't blame your cat.
As for the mice, I could only wish they had been ninja-like. These guys had no skillz, there were just a lot of them that year.
T'was a wild rat. And I don't blame him for being scared either. lol.
Man, I've sen some real freaking rats in these parts. Yeah, my hooded dumbo, Astrid, is pretty big at 18 inches from nose to the end of her tail, but we've seen rats out here that were an easy two and a half feet long, and bigger than literally every cat I've seen in this city. Probably less friendly and quite formidable too! (O_O)
It was funny but when my friend Nick and I went canoeing I fell overboard. From then on he named me "warf rat". lol. I called him weasel!
Do you guys still have mice problems? I hate to admit that they kind of bother me. I wouldn't say that I'm scared, but seeing them run around is disturbing.
Aaron, it's an ongoing spring thing. Although, now that my boss is there all year, we don't have to evict nearly as many as we used to. And deer mice are so cute that I really don't mind (except when they nibble on my cream cheese brownies!).
This is not one of my photos, I pinched it off the internet.
N'aww. Deer mice are pretty darn cute n_n
Mousie nibbles lol 
This is the cutest blog I've ever read of yours Tami. I've never seen this kind of angle of your writing before. It's very adorable, enthusiastic, and telling the story of the mice it's like a child's book except with a little more cursing. I loved it.
I have a pet Crayfish at the moment. My nephew Isaiah brought it with him from school, his teacher gave it to him, and I ended up kind of adopting it because I didn't want to see it killed or neglected. He doesn't like me at all and is naturally wants to hide a lot from light, from me, and everything, but I've tried to make him comfortable and make his non-natural life okay for him but I still feel sad for him. He was a wild Crayfish and now he's in an alien environment with no natural predators or prey, there's artificial light, he has a whole tank to himself, it's safe and he gets fed every day and he has places to hide and come up for air and his water is clean, but it still seems like a prison. All his instincts, genetics, and conditioning seem useless now since he's not in the wild.
This is me in full story-telling mode. Quite a few of my older blogs are like this. There was a drunken odyssey in search of Shane MacGowan, who was a no-show at a concert, an account of the LLF's (Lobster Liberation Front) first, last , and only mission, an entire blog about pet vomit, and probably a few more.
I wouldn't worry too much about your crayfish. They're pretty anti-social creatures to start with. As for natural prey, trust me, animals are opportunists. I'm sure he's pretty happy about the free and easy eats.
Mice don't tend to bother my house too much. Maybe because of our 5 cats? Who knows? But I battled a rat the size of a beaver in a neighbors barn last year. Had to use a bat! Just pissed him off at first I think. He fought me valiantly that day. You sound like you know what you're doing in this war. Give em' hell!!!!
Hey Wayde! Did you know I gave you and Bobby a big shout-out in my farewell blog to 1up?
As for that rat - make you feel like the Bard in the PS2 Bard's Tale?
I always wanted a mouse or a hamster as a pet, until one day, we realized that we had a mouse infestation, and they were eating all of the Halloween candy that I was stockpiling!
It's funny how personal it becomes when they start eating your treats, isn't it? I probably wouldn't have been nearly so annoyed if they hadn't started in on my brownie,
When I was going through elementary school I had a huge fat hamster named Squishy. He was awesome but he was always escaping during the night and chewing holes in his housing complex he had, so I'd find him the next day somewhere around the house and have to fix his home somehow or have my mom buy new compartments. I always kept bugging my mom to buy more and more compartments because I wanted to give Squishy the biggest fucking house possible. He had a big central playground where he could run in the wheel, play around in the wood padding and dig through it. Then there was a bunch of tunnels connecting to other rooms and padding where he could sleep. Then there was a big tower he could climb and go to this penthouse where he slept sometimes. Then there was a tunnel leading to a big maze that he went through from time to time.
The maze is what killed him though, and it was awful because I watched it happen. I came home from school one day and I always went to check on him first and spent like a half hour or so watching him run around and do stuff and make sure he had everything. That day he was going through the maze, and halfway through the maze he stopped and died there for some reason, maybe a heart attack or some other stress induced condition. I was crushed at the time, but I was able to give him a good burial and everything. He was a great pet while he lasted but I still wish I knew what was wrong with him so maybe he could've been taken to the vet and treated or saved. I don't know if it was a health condition, if it was something in his food, or whatever possibility.
How old was Squishy? Rodents really don't live very long. One to three years is the average for hamsters, so Squishy may have just died of old age.
Squishy was a few years old so I think you may be right. He was nearly full size when I got him, and then I had him for a couple years so he probably had a full life.
I do not like Mice, mouses or any type of rodent....I am scared of them! seriously
One of my fellow rangers is, too. I seem to be the one people go to when there is a giant spider, a snake, a mouse, or a snapping turtle that needs to be moved to any place else. I find it pretty funny, being a female of small stature and all.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Comments