Proud Parents

Pansy brings her mouse to us in the house.

I think John and I are too permissive, indulgent, complacent — whatever you want to call it —  about the cats. I find that not many other people understand stories like this.

Pansy caught her first mouse in New Hampshire two years ago and since then we have no documentation that she ever caught one again. But she got one on July 10. I was leaving the house out the back door, which is always open during daylight for the cats, with my camera, as Pansy was trying to come in with her kill. Pansy hates my guts, so she wouldn't enter while I was there. I took advantage of this to photograph her and then stepped aside to let her in.

Under the kitchen table.

Pansy ran to the kitchen and dropped her dead mouse under the table. She doesn't eat her mice. She just drops them and guards them. But Oscar was not going to let an old lady's spitting deter him. He began to bat the mouse about on the floor when Pansy hissed at him. Oscar challenged her authority and she relented and let him have it.

Spitting Pansy.

Now it was Oscar's turn to be ferocious. He growled and postured as he took possession of the mouse.

July 10 was a Sunday — pancake breakfast day — so I began cooking.as Oscar was tossing the mouse about the kitchen and dining room. A friend, R, dropped in then. Since we were going to have breakfast, I invited him to join us and he accepted. He sat down and began watching Oscar tossing his dead, mangled mouse about. John and I, realizing this may be an odd breakfast activity, explained to R that Oscar was learning to hunt, getting a good taste for mice, and we were very proud. An odd expression came over R’s face, but he ate plenty of pancakes, sausages and coffee.

Growling Oscar

After breakfast, I cleaned the kitchen while R and John talked at the table. It had been over an hour since Oscar took the mouse from Pansy but he was still tossing it high in the air and leaping about the kitchen. Soon Oscar became quiet, so I went to see what he was up to (quiet kittens, like quiet children, need to be checked on). Oscar was crouched in the dining room — eating the mouse. In fact, he had eaten the entire head and shoulders. How proud I was of him! I called out to the men at the table, and John, equally proud, interrupted his conversation to watch Oscar. Our boy was going to be a great hunter!

R had to leave then. Oscar ate the entire mouse except for the read end and tail. R has not returned for another breakfast.

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Mice In the Walls

Deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus)

I've written a lot about the renovations to the sun porch. It was my favorite spot in the house in the summer. We would move computers out there for the season. The views were fantastic. We watched moose, deer, coyote, beaver, otter, and all the birds. If we were courageous, we would stay out there during fantastic thunderstorms and try to photograph lightning.

Before Christmas, John began demolishing the porch in order to enlarge the kitchen. We knew this would be one of the most poorly built parts of the house, and it was. We had always heard mice in the walls and under the floor. We even had a mouse leave the porch and walk around the window screens outside! When John took the walls down, the mice began pouring out. Pouring. It was awful. Used to having a "highway" of wall studs to traverse the walls, the mice continued on their paths even when the walls came down. They would stop and look around at the open room, but generally the mice were not alarmed at the lack of walls.

This little guy no longer exists — the cats dispatched it.

The night of December 13th was Cat Party Night. No cats came to bed that night. In the morning we found body parts scattered about the house, upstairs and down. There were remains of at least three mice on the porch itself. We can tell who killed which mouse by the way they were partially eaten. Buddy likes to eat half a mouse when he kills it and leaves the other half (the bottom half) for a snack later in the day. Zorro skins his mice before eating and never eats the tail.

I had quite a few nightmares after December 13th. In them, I would walk onto the porch and see rivers of mice pouring out of the wall. There was nothing I could do to stop them and even the cats were overwhelmed by the quantity of mice! Thankfully, the nightmares seem to have stopped. Mice may look cute but they carry disease, leave trails of urine and feces everywhere (which can cause illness) and are very destructive. They are in infinite supply, too. Every animal in the woods eats them, yet their population never declines.

John's construction and sealing of the walls has just about eliminated our mouse problem. There is no more evidence of them in the pantry or linen closet. But we know there are places in the back hall and laundry room where they still exist. The cats continue to carefully watch and listen to activity in those two walls. We will be mouse free very soon!

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Kitchen Remodeling

The kitchen floor revealed.

After the new kitchen windows were installed where the new sink will go on the front of the house, and after the sheet rock was installed, it was time to restore and level the floor. John pulled up the floor and found a few things of interest. In the photo above you can see the new windows and walls, which extend through where the sun porch used to be. The old sun porch is now part of the new kitchen.

The original wooden floor from 110 years ago had been cut away and removed in past years. It was quite a loss for me. The original subfloor was constructed from old barn walls. The problem was that it extended over the foundation of the house, so we had ice forming inside the house on top of the floor. The original subfloor was covered with shims, paperboard and plywood. It was flat but it was not level. John had to do some serious jacking of the house again to get it level. But the house will never be truly level in all places —  it will be as level as humanly possible without taking down every wall and rebuilding the house from the foundation up.

A clearer view of the extent of the new kitchen area.

In the photograph above, you can see a square, plastic covered hole in the right-hand wall at the end of the room. This will be a window to the porch. Half of the old sun porch is now incorporated in the new kitchen, and half will be a summer sitting porch that will look down Route 16 as it goes down into the village. Part of the door to the sitting porch is visible on the far right of the photo.The new kitchen is full of light and has clear views of the beautiful beaver bog.

A mouse nest.
You can see that the original wooden floor was cut away here.

And of course, we found this mouse nest under the subfloor! It looks very cozy and warm. It was under the area where Amy and I always had a couch in the kitchen. There is a tiny tunnel to the inside of the nest that you may see on the top of the nest. There was no insulation available anywhere near the nest, so the mice had to manually haul nesting material, which is above the furnace in the basement, to build their home in a warm spot. John is now building a pantry in this area.

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Deer Mouse or White-footed Mouse?

Deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus)

On a sunny August morning, a deer mouse suddenly appeared on the outside of the porch screen! The cats knew it was there before we did. We don't know why it was there. But we speculate that it was simply using the screen as a way to get from one place to another and the cats startled and panicked it. And then I, with my camera, scared it some more. She (it's a girl) quickly found a way down that kept her a good distance from me and the cats and slipped inside the porch wall. She was living there until recently, when I think she was caught in a trap inside the house. We use traps because the cats are sort of useless as hunters inside the house.

How do I know she was a deer mouse and not a white-footed mouse? Her tail. You can see how the color is distinctly different on the top and bottom of her tail. Deer mice and white-footed mice look nearly identical except for the tail. A white-footed mouse tail also has two colors but they are not as distinct as this.

By the way, deer mice and white-footed mice, which are both native to Vermont, are known to carry the hanta virus (or, hantavirus). In fact, people in Vermont have become sickened with the virus. So be careful — be strict in your homes about keeping the mice out. We are renovating our house so soon they won't be able to get into the walls. Be sure to read this page from the Vermont Department of Health.

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