Pest control

We have mice in the Guppy. It's been parked for less than a month, and mice are already turning it into a condo.

I discovered that yesterday when I finally got around to stripping the bed. Between the top sheet and the bottom, smack dab in the middle of the bed, I discovered a stash of seeds of some sort. Tucked between two pillows was another stash. I'm reasonably sure neither cache was there the last time the S.O. and I slept in that bed. I thought I'd spotted mouse droppings on a counter; the seeds were confirmation the little bastards have indeed found a way in.

Now the big questions are where and how -- where is the gap they've found and are exploiting, and how do we plug it?

Until we do that, I guess I'll set a mousetrap or two. I'm not too happy about the idea because in an abstract way I like mice -- one of the kids had pet mice years ago -- but I don't want to have to live with their droppings or their annoying habit of chewing on fabric to get material for nest building.

We do have to stop the mice before they gain too much of a foothold in the Guppy. Mice are social critters. There is no such thing as one mouse. If there's one mouse, there's another one (or a whole herd of them) lurking in the wings. Mice are so social that they'll die of loneliness. All that sociability means mice have big families. You see evidence of one or two mice one week; the next week it's pretty clear they've multiplied. A lot.

Which means that later today it's going to be time to double check the Guppy, make sure nothing that's remotely edible is in a container mice can get into (although they're apparently not real picky in what they eat, considering that Lava hand soap is on their list of comestibles), do a thorough cleaning, and set the traps. Not how I had planned to spend the afternoon, but the alternatives (multiple mouse nests hiding in various corners) are a lot worse.