The Life Of A House Mouse

Our little mouse starts his day off at eight at night. He was living in the field down the street, but the land is being cleared for development. This has forced him to start searching for a better place to live. His journey brings him through a patch of wood, and along the side of an apartment complex.

It takes some effort, but he manages to climb up through a downspout on an external storage shed. From the roof of the shed, he dangles and falls down into an adjacent dumpster filled with untold treasures. This is a good two hours of happy, slimy foraging. He finds a decomposing paper plate with some ketchup and other juices. Yum! He chews his way through a black, plastic bag and uncovers a rotting apple. Delicious! And for dessert, he decides to partake of the pudding that has run down into the corner of the dumpster. His adventure to find a new home is starting off better than he ever expected.

After a few loud thumps from some garbage bags being thrown in, it is time to move on. He climbs the bags and slides himself over the lip of the sliding door hole, and drops down onto the pavement. This is definitely something he wants to live by, so he sniffs around. The garbage bin touches the hard tar all the way around, making it unappealing as a place to build a nest. Perhaps he can find something in the tree line, and just travel back here on a daily basis.

From the treeline he sees a warm and inviting back yard. There are all kinds of things to nest in there! This yard has a ton of construction materials, and even an old tire buried in some uncut grass. He spends a good hour exploring every inch of this wonderful playground, and catches a whiff of garbage. This place has food too? Niiiiice! He can't immediately figure out how to get into the trash can, because it is tall, and made of hard plastic, but he'll come back and look for a way, when he is more hungry.

These people don't get their perimeter sprayed, so it is easy work to scan the foundation for a way in. He squeezes under the porch, by way of a hole some other mammal dug--probably a woodchuck--based on the size of it. There is no woodchuck under the porch now though, so it is safe to look around.

He'd be content to nest under the porch, but he finds a rotted hole some insects have been working on. His love for chewing has him gnawing and exploring the hole. It isn't long before he is inside the wall void, scratching his way all the way up to the attic.

This place is perfect! He rips up some insulation, gnaws on some wiring, and chews on a little sheetrock that was left in a stack. If this homeowner had TAP insulation, this would be the end of the story. The borates in TAP would have killed the little mouse. But instead, he makes a starter nest, and goes back down through the wall voids and begins chewing a hole to see where it will come out.

The hole brings him in behind the kitchen cabinets. He squeezes through and wiggles down into the silverware drawer, and sniffs around for food, sliding his tainted fur across the spoons. No food here.

After dropping a few pellets, he scratches his way up and out. This drawer search goes on for a long time, until he find some cardboard boxes with a faint aroma of sweetness. He gnaws on the side of one until its contents begin to pour out the side. Good thing these people don't use hard plastic to seal their food. This is going to be easy pickings.

It has been a long day, and his belly is full, so he takes a drink from the tiny puddle that has formed under the sink pipe, and heads back up to his nest. It must be morning, because he is feeling sleepy. He curls up in his starter nest, and dreams of another day of foraging.

What can we draw from this story?

Wild mice come and go from a dwelling as they please. Their inclination to forage in decaying or septic environments makes them a danger to families. They damage wiring and wood, and contaminate food and silverware. If you have mice living in your home, contact a professional pest management company to safely remove them. A pest management company can also teach you exclusion methods to keep those mice out.