Winter's Tail End and the Mouse Saga pt.2

Winter's death grip is finally loosening. Though we woke up to snow this morning, the temperature has quickly risen from face-and-nostril-stinging to can-go-out-in-a-jumper-and-be-perfectly-comfortable. It already feels like a small weight has been lifted from the shoulders.

Update on the fireplace-mystery-visitor. My dad came over this afternoon with his inspection mirror and various tools to prod around. We removed the foil tape covering the flue and discovered a whole bunch of old newspaper packed into the cavity. When we removed that, out came a whole mess of mouse scat followed by a bundle of fur and miscellany, like chewed up paper and dried grass - clearly someone's humble abode. They picked a good spot anyway - no hawks, cats, or snakes would be getting them from in there.

The landlord joined us to assess the situation and decide what to do. My suggestion was to get a small double-door cage type trap to place either on the sort of shelf of the cavity up in the chimney, or down on the ground of the hearth which we would block off from the living room with the panel I use for stretching paper. Much to my dismay, he didn't like that idea, and instead took a trip up the road to the hardware store. He returned with a small arsenal of wretched traps - mainly two trays full of some ridiculously sticky substance, and two clamp traps. I made an uncomfortable attempt at talking him out of these and into something else but it wasn't any use; he's the type of person who sticks to a thing once his mind is set on it.

So now I'm sitting in my studio, which is also the living room, awaiting either the sound of a clamp snapping shut or the creature screaming as it tries to get out of the wretched sticky shit. I don't want to be here at all. The landlord will be back in a few hours tonight to check the traps, and again tomorrow morning. I want to remove everything at once and try something else - but I also don't want to piss off the landlord (who is also my uncle, and lives just upstairs) even more than he is at having a mouse in his house. The tension between my moral code (don't hurt anything, not even spiders or ants) and the need to maintain a good relationship with family / landlord is terrible. Thus my desire to flee from the situation altogether (out of sight out of mind, right?)

Last year we had a rat burrowing in the flowerbed beneath our porch. He was going to put rat poison out but I managed to talk him out of that (there are far far too many stray cats, dogs, pets that get loose, birds, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, wildlife in general in our neighborhood- anything at all could get into it and would suffer horribly) and into one of the door-closing cage traps. I asked him to let me know when he caught it, so I could take it down into the valley and release it, far away from the house and into the woods. To my dismay, when he did catch it, he filled a barrel of water in the back garden and shoved the cage, rat and all, into it for half a day. I didn't talk to him for two weeks afterwards (but never did tell him why).

I feel an incredible moral duty to remove the traps.
The sticky ones sound particularly bad. At least the snappy ones would, at best, be quick...to think of the thing suffering and struggling in that goo...(although I wonder whether there'd be some way for me to help the creature out should it fall victim to it...)
But at the same time I feel obliged to listen to the 'rules' of the person who owns the house.
At the price of a living creature's life though? ("Oh but it's just a mouse.") That guilt will weigh heavier on me than any winter day.

Stay tuned.

Edit: Moral compass wins. The shop has a catch-and-release trap specifically for mice that's small enough for the hearth. I hope the landlord doesn't get upset - I can't imagine why he would other than he spent $10 on his cruel traps - but, well, I won't budge of he does.

Endless Winter - Tipper Knows.

There’s not much I miss more in cold or wet weather than an open fire. The continuation of a seemingly endless, depressing winter has found me gazing longingly at our cold and barren hearth wishing we could bring it back from the dead. It’s illegal to have functional fireplaces in multi-family housing in our city, but most landlords have kept the original hearths in the units for decorative purposes. Such is the case for ours. 

The brick around it has been whitewashed, but the muddy-red tiles on the floor of it are original, or so they look. It was gas-powered, so the old pipe head, now disconnected from the main, still sticks up in the back. The top, where I assume some manner of exhaust duct or ventilation would have been, has been covered, curiously, by foil tape. It’s not much more than a good-looking, cold little nook in the wall. 

About a week ago Tipper started a nightly ritual of sitting in front of this scene with Seán Mhicí Ted Beag (our hearth gnome), and his candle, and staring at the foil-tape-roof.  She’d set herself down square in front, bright eye’d, tall ear’d, and with her tail twitching and swishing in that way it does when she watches the birds or squirrels or when I tease her with a toy. For a few nights I’d wondered whether a spider of some kind had come out of hibernation and sought solace in some corner, but there was nothing to be found - and surely she’d have pounced within seconds had it been a spider. Yet she continued every night to sit there, with some “crouching tiger” stalk poses mixed in, and a few moments of getting in the space and standing up to sniff the foil-y roof. Since none of my scrutiny returned the slightest hints of anything interesting, I could only guess that it was her reflection in the tape that she was amused by. 

I must admit to painting her as a simpler creature than she is. 

Jack and I were getting ready to tuck ourselves in for the night when I heard a little sound unlike all the little sounds I’ve grown used to hearing. At first it sounded like rain, or some sort of particles, falling on the back side of the tape. But sure it wasn’t raining - and didn’t it just rain yesterday, and a million times before that, and we never heard water getting in (does the ‘exhaust’ for the thing even go straight up and out anyway?) Sure enough there was Tipper the whole while - sitting there as was her wont each night, staring up, tail swishing vigorously back and forth. We both got down close, sticking our ears in Seán Mhící Ted Beag’s whitewashed cove, and sure enough - gnawing sounds, the sounds of little feet and claws moving, scratching and chewing at something, right there above us, separated by no more than a few layers of old foil tape. It sounded as though they were chewing the tape itself. But what WAS it and how on earth did it get in there?

Tipper knew the whole time. She must have heard it making its way there from wherever it came, whatever it is. Sitting and waiting patiently for the arrival of this curiosity. 

It being 1am we were not about to walk upstairs and ask my uncle, our landlord, for help. Nor were we about to try and cut the tape out for a peek. No indeed, with it being past Brógan’s working hours (10pm at the latest), and Tipper being only twice the size of a proper rat (if it wasn’t a mouse, or squirrel, or opossum, or mutant Cleveland sewer creatuirín), and Seán Mhicí Ted Beag having had no time to clear out. We’ve boarded it up with the panel I use to stretch paper and some cardboard, abutted by the coffee table, and are hoping for the best for the night.

I wonder what we will find in the morning. 

And right now I cannot possibly get “The Waterford Boys” our of my head;

“Well I wasn't long sleeping when I heard something creeping,

And gnawing and chawing around the bed post,

My breath I suspended but the noise never ended,

Thinks I you have damnable claws for a ghost,

Now to make myself easy for I felt rather lazy,

Well over my head I again pulled the clothes,

When Moses what's that, sure a great big jack-rat,

With one leap from the floor jumped right up to my nose."