Sep 15th, 2016

Author: donich_admin

Mouse on Mouse

I mentioned that Schrodi has suddenly developed a liking for bringing in field mice. Well unlike his usual short-tailed voles they are the proverbial bugger to catch (they almost seem to be able to teleport from one side of the room to another just when you think you have them cornered). The other day he brought one in and no matter how hard we tried we could not catch it and let it out.

So around 2am, it started making a rustling noise in the bedroom, and I was sure it was starting to make a nest under the radiator. Perhaps foolishly, I opened the door to my office and shut it in there so we could get some sleep.

The next morning, there was no sign of the mouse, but on my desk there was a small pile of black pellets. At first I thought they were droppings, but then I looked at my mouse (the computer one); almost all the rubber had been eaten off the centre wheel.

Later that day we managed to catch the mouse (the live one) using R’s ‘trap it in a poster tube’ technique and released it, but my mouse (the computer one) was knackered and I had to buy a new peripherals set. I’m quite glad about that actually – the function keys on the old one had a interesting design ‘feature’ where the writing on them was dark blue on black – not so good if you do web development stuff and need the F12 key a lot.

I don’t have another mouse picture so here is one of Schrodi being ‘shamed’ for rodent related activities last year.