We have a little brown mouse...

We have a mouse, not in our house but in our backyard. This little brown mouse is the first one I’ve seen since we moved here. My guess as to why I haven’t seen one before here is because mice are a favorite food of many predators that also live here in Paradise, so my guess is that little brown mice are short in supply. We have hawks that circle our yard by day, and in the evening I have heard the call of an owl or two. Owls love the taste of fresh, brown mouse!

The other day our MOM cat, Princess, sometimes we call her Lucky Princess and at other times she is just Ms. Sumo was so excited that she was running back and forth in the hall in front of our extra long patio door.
She was making her usual doodley doot sound that she makes instead of meowing like other cats do. When Sumo is excited, she makes unusual sounds that other cats wouldn’t think of saying. In general, when Princess Sumo is excited, she is quite a sight!

Princess is much shorter in the leg than most other cats, and her body width is indicative of a cat that doesn’t believe in portion control. Back when the original Shriek movie was released on DVD I brought home a copy and played it in the back bedroom for the cats. Princess was the one cat who stayed for the entire movie, and every time the Eddie Murphy donkey character was on the screen, Princess would stand up and say doodley, doot, doot. I knew from her reaction that she related to the donkey thinking it was a lot like her since it had short legs like her, was round in the body, and had long ears on the top of it’s head instead of on the side like we humans do. While Princess Sumo’s ears are large they are not quite as long as donkey’s ears are.

The sight of a delicious brown mouse on our porch was just too much for Princess to endure even though she has never tasted brown mouse! “Doodley doot, doo, doot, I spy a brown mousie on my porch, mommy come here, doodley doot, doot.” I am sure this is what she was saying to me!

It turned out that the very small brown mouse had/has set up housekeeping behind a large blue Tupperware tub on our porch where I keep some of my gardening supplies like snail bate and flower fertilizer. Realizing where the little creature was hiding prompted me to go to the local hardware store, and requested a trap.

I didn’t ask for a trap to kill the creature instead I requested a trap that would capture the creature without harming it so I could release it out into the wild giving it a chance to do whatever little brown mice do in the wild. As it stood the little creature didn’t stand a chance in my backyard where cats roam, including my neighbor’s cats, and hawks circle overhead looking for lunch!

The clerk had just the trap. Guaranteed to trap and not kill. The clerk told me; “Add peanut butter to the inside back of the trap, and the mouse enters. The door shuts down, and you have your mouse.”

Add peanut butter?

What have we been putting out in a ‘nut box’ for months, for the Scrub Jays and squirrels that have been frequenting our back yard.

Peanuts!

What is peanut butter made from?

Peanuts!

Squirrels are rodents the same as mice are rodents.
Class both belong to is Mammalia; the Order both belong to is Rodentia. Mice belong to Genus: Mus while squirrels belong to Genus: Sciurus. Both animals are unquestionably rodents. So why do we favor the cute squirrels when they come into our yard to partake of the nut box?
Do I put out the trap?
Do we keep our mouse?

The other evening, unknown to me, my husband removed some of the nuts from the shells and placed them in a dish near the entrance to the back of the blue Tupperware box. He told me that it was just to ‘test’ wither or not the little brown mouse was still doing ‘light housekeeping’ in back of the blue Tupperware box we have in the corner, on our porch.
The nuts disappeared during the night.

The next morning when he told me what he had done, I asked my husband if he remembered to place a dish of water on the porch for his ‘pet’ mouse? And was he ready for when Mrs. Mouse would move in, and we would see thimble sized mouse children wandering on the porch at night playing ‘kick the ball’ and other mouse games?

What would we do if the owls decided to roost on our porch because little brown mice are their favorite midnight snack?

Ahhh, while living in Paradise is sometimes strange, it is never boring!

This is another true life story of Carol Garnier Dutra, A.K.A. MOM in Hollister.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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