I’ve been hearing critters at night- always around 11pm the activity escalates. It’s a cacophony of scraping -scurried scattered scamperings as critters of some sort, I believe mice, make their way around and about the crawl space of my house. I’d not been able to figure out how they were getting into the pier & beam crawl space, but finally found an egress hole in the dirt, against the back of the house that had been hidden by overgrown vegetation and am quite sure, from their sound patterns, that this is where they make their approach to join the party.
This isn’t a new problem. There are mouse / rat poison stations tucked near the house perimeter- placed by previous occupants, but apparently long ago unbaited. Sadly, today I will bait the traps again. Whatever is small enough to access both the trap and my house, will ingest the poison and wander back to their nests to die in 24-48 hours. From what I’ve read, the poison is a neurotoxin and the death process may be painful.
I don’t want to kill the animals. I appreciate their place in the ecosystem and I wish our yard had a rat snake that was fat on the hog, so to speak, from these mice. I wish the falcon I’ve seen swoop in and snatch up a blue jay would feast on these mice. Neither of those demise would be painless, but at least it would be the natural cycle. That cycle is not the reality in this scenario. Nature’s prey predator cycle can’t keep up when prey have such a generously provided hiding spot.
The reality is 75 years ago this little neighborhood was built on what was then farmland near the heart of Austin and a bustling neighborhood grew up with yards and trees and people. The animals continue to breed and have to live within our constrains and are doing very well for themselves. The reality is a mischief of mice is residing under my bathroom and they are terrible guests. In addition to late night antics, which I could possibly get used to, they have terrible hygiene. Their antics are creating the smell the ammonia which is likely off gassing from their piss and shit. Appropriately, the smell is limited to the bathroom which means they are likely in that area- which is virtually unreachable via said crawl space. Some days it’s worse than others- likely related to their reproductive cycles and the number of freeloaders under the house. Regardless, their hidey-hole is also my home and they are awful squatters. Thanks to their foraging nature, they will soon die a painful death and I will be able to have a clean smelling, healthy house once more. Nature always creates balance. In this case humans with an understanding of chemistry and the ability to create poison, so that balance isn’t always fair.
Spread Your Dreams 