London mice are clearly a more canny lot than their country cousins. We get field mice in the house from time to time, especially around autumn when the weather gets a bit colder and some enterprising rodent thinks he'd rather spend the winter in centrally heated comfort.
They make their presence felt by chewing a bag of bread or cereal in the food cupboard and it normally takes only a few snaps of the trap to sort them out.
It's not a nice thing to do, but if they'd only stay outside I wouldn't have to declare war on them. We detected one last year, the trap was set and within half an hour I had him. His little teeth were just closing on that sunflower seed when it all went black. He died a happy mouse in the anticipation of a tasty snack.
Perhaps word has got round, but we've not had one since. Sam and Lucy on the other hand have got some regular visitors; hardly an infestation, but some very cheeky characters and they're proving hard to get rid of. I lent them our tried-and-tested traps, but there was no catching a London mouse so easily. Sam's mice steal the seed off the pressure plate and the trap remains unsprung. I don't know how they do it, the trap is so sensitive that if you put it down a bit clumsily it goes off and scares the living daylights out of you.
Sam got some super-sensitive traps but they have also failed, he's tried different bait, but those mice remain on the loose. And we know they are there - they've been seen running around, popping their heads up between the floorboards. The man in the hardware store suggested sticky pads was the sure-fire way to get them. The mouse runs onto the pad and can't get off. I asked what you were supposed to do then - hit it with the cricket bat? Sam was told that you just picked up the pad and put it in the bin - apparently the mouse soon dies. Hardly seems very humane and Lucy has vetoed this particular form of pest control.
So far the traps have yielded nothing and the mice are loving that nice warm house for winter.
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