Fall is such a lovely time of year! The days are warm (not scorching hot, like it was in the summer) and the nights are cool. The sunlight takes on a golden hue that makes everything glimmer in the sunset. And oh, the sunsets! Each evening paints the sky with a new palette of color.
And the mice come in the house. Lots of mice...herds of MICE! They are looking for warmth and shelter, and find it inside, along with lovely nest material from the dishtowel drawer and delicious provisions from the pantry. And, at my house, they find traps! Traps baited with peanut butter and maple syrup that they find irresistible!
I don't use poison much. There is a young dog in my house who can't leave anything alone. I don't want to poison my pets and I don't want a mouse to crawl behind the cabinets and die, either. It's amazing how much stink can come from such a little thing.
For the last couple of weeks, my traps have been very busy. I have lost track of the number of mice I have caught. The are coming in behind the kitchen cabinets, somewhere, I think, from under the house. I can't see any holes from inside, so we will have to go under the house, pull back the insulation pack and look for holes (probably around the pipes) to patch.
I keep a couple of traps set in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, since that is where I catch the most mice. I usually hear them snap closed, but once in a while I miss it. The cat is good about letting me know when I have caught one. (It's too bad he isn't better at catching them, himself!) He sits and stares at the cabinet doors or scratches at the door trying to open it.
Sunday evening, I noticed the cat staring at the cabinet doors. His body language was a little different than usual, but it was plain that there was something in there. I opened the door....
For the first second or so, my brain couldn't make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I was expecting a mouse, or at least an empty trap. The trap definitely wasn't empty and that was not a mouse!
This is a Great Plains Rat Snake. A young one. I am sure he came in the same way the mice are coming in. They are great mousers, as their name implies. I doubt he would have been in there if not for the mice. And no, he was very much alive, although I felt he was mortally wounded. We took him out and killed him all the way dead. It didn't seem right to turn him loose to a slow death.
As an side, I did catch another mouse later in the evening, in the same cabinet. I really hate mice!
I am including a bonus critter in this post. On Saturday, my grand daughter had her sweet sixteen party at the Quartz Mountain Resort. They had to set up and decorate the room on Friday. As part of the decorations, there were paper lanterns hung outside on the deck. As the guests started to arrive Saturday evening, just before sundown, we discovered an uninvited guest.
Nestled in one of the paper lanterns, sleeping peacefully, was this little brown bat. The kids though this was the coolest thing they had ever seen! We made sure they left the little fellow alone until the sun set and he went on his batty way to make his living.
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