Of Mice And Ants

Spring has sprung. The daily temps would argue otherwise, but the daylight hours affect the flowers and birds and everything, nonetheless.

We've had an ant invasion in the kitchen. Irene's food bowl is overrun with them, and we're wasting kitty chow. I'm putting it down the garbage disposal, because putting it in the trash would not be a good solution. I'm doing what I can, so is he, but they are relentless in their search for sustenance.

When we first moved into this house, in August 2010, we set the bed up in the living room. I thought this would be a temporary solution to the house not being really ready to occupy, but we needed to live here because now the horses lived here. We were concentrating on making their lives better, and helping us to be able to do that, with water and electric in the barn, secure pasture and like that. It took more time then we thought, the weather didn't always cooperate, and we ended up sleeping in the living room for a year and a half. Time does fly!

That same year in late August I discovered baby Eastern Ring-neck snakes in the dining room. Earth worms are bigger than these babies. When I told friends about this, most said they would: 1. move out; 2. call an Exterminator.

Number one was never an option. Number two was also not an option. We're farmers! Farmers don't call anyone to help. It just isn't the way things are done on a farm. It also would derail that 'Yankee Ingenuity' thing that has made America, and Americans, great. We could figure it out!

Every year, we get baby snakes in the house. Irene dispatches most of them. Some die of dehydration, some I catch alive and transport to places they would be better off living. I would never kill any of them. Ever. And I'm not moving because we have snakes, and mice, and bees, and groundhogs, and skunks, and spiders, and whatever else someone said would be untenable to live with.

Mice are also multiplying, but not in the house. Irene draws the line there! In the barn. Skip has three in his stall, Alli has one, at least one in the aisle, and more in the store room. I'm drawing the line in the barn.

Saturday I cleaned up the barn pretty well. The day was chilly, and later in the day the wind picked up, again, and was howling through, gusting up to 40 mph. We had snow flurries, too. I pulled the doors shut to keep it bearable. I mucked all the stalls, the aisle, and some outside, but it was so cold I didn't want to stay out there. I had on two coats.

I baited the box that I usually keep in the shed. We don't have mice in the shed. When he cleaned out the shed a few months ago, he found a mummified mouse. I keep the feed in a chest freezer. The freezer does work, but it is not plugged in. Don't keep the feed frozen, but the gasket on the lid is secure enough to keep vermin out of the feed bags.

Saturday night when I was feeding, the bait box had been moved. On Sunday morning there was a dead mouse in the aisle. My plan is working.