Location, Location, Location

Truer words were never spoken.

I bought my little cottage on the pond in June. I never thought I’d buy a home again but living here is truly my piece of peace. It’s just a little discouraging when that peace gets disrupted.

First of all, if you know me, you know I’m an animal lover. I rescue cats and dogs and even put the spiders inside of my cottage, gently outside. I love hearing the frogs around my pond, the geese when they come to visit and even the occasional sighting of a groundhog. It’s a mutual feeling – we both run when we see each other.

However one particular animal scares me and makes me scream. They are adorable – kind of – in pictures and I think they’ve been in every Disney cartoon.

Yup. Mice.

I’m afraid because they run so fast, pop up unexpectedly and frankly poop everywhere. It’s just rude. They must poop hundreds of times a day. I don’t even want to think about how much they pee.

So imagine my surprise when this spring I went to get my coffee cup out of the car and saw little black nuggets in the bottom of the cup. I tried not to freak out but started looking around inside the car. And there they were. Little black mouse poops all over the passenger seat and on the floor.

I did start to cry and scream. I’m not embarrassed to admit it.

I popped the hood and found evidence of my new roomies. I was so grossed out. I didn’t want to get back into the car for fear they’d jump out at me as I drove.

Long horrible story short, the great service department at Yark Nissan (shameless plug) went through my car, found their nest under the hood AND a nest inside of my car under the spare tire. I bought repellent, got the bug noise zapper things for under my hood and under the spare and used every other old wives tale solutions I could get. I did put a trap in my car and killed one. I’m sorry. My turf. You cross it, you die.

Then I cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned.

Switch to this summer. My friends and neighbors Rob and Kim were over. I went to move my kayak and low and behold, there was a mouse nest. I saw the mouse. It didn’t really run and looked really fat. As I nudged it with my oar it started to try to get away.

Then she dropped a newborn mouse out of her as she moved. She was in labor.

I immediately wanted to help her. How awful to be giving birth, get scared and you can’t really run away. She was able to get into my fire pit which is overgrown and hasn’t been used this year. But the baby was still on the ground. Rob was able to gently pick it up with the oar and get it into the fire pit with its mom.

I worried about that momma mouse and her babies all night.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. My central AC went out. The repair person came out, said it had a blown fuse and fixed it. Then he went out to look at my heat pump.

Mice had moved in, chewed insulation but thankfully hadn’t chewed the wiring. He got the nest out, caulked any hole they might get into and I sprayed repellant on the outside. I was ready to scream at them all, chase them and lecture them about how costly their move into my heat pump had been.

Damn mice.

I thought about it later and realized that I’m very comfortable with mice and me living separately and respectful of each other’s space. They live in the outdoors and be happy and I’m good. Come near me and my car or home, and it’s all-out war.

So just like they say, location does make a difference.

You’d think with all of my cats, they’d know to move to a safer neighborhood.