Larry Gibbons
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Mice and Snow

7/2/2017

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Picture
Christmas Tree Farm on our Road
I think Houdini, the escape-artist mouse whom I caught and set free somewhat less than two miles from our trailer, has made it back to our abode. (See Blog 63: “Houdini”  ).

Why do I think this? Because the damn mice are now entering the foyer of our ‘live mouse trap’, finishing off the peanut butter and then vacating our sure-fire trap in an orderly fashion. We haven’t caught a single mouse.

Picture
Live Mouse Trap
Hell, I’ve even seen them, late at night, inside the live trap. However, in the morning, when I went outside to warm up the truck and then returned to collect the mouse and escort him to the warm vehicle in order to taxi him or her to a new home, he or she had slipped away into some dark and mysterious trailer place.
You know what else I think? I think Houdini is a gifted instructor. I think he’s teaching late night and early morning courses. Giving mice instructions on how to escape from our variety of traps. Escapology One, Two and Three.

I’ll also tell you why I’m thinking this and it’s not just because the mice are pigging out on our peanut butter and not worrying a whit about getting caught.

You see, last night, around two am, while I was stumbling around the kitchen, trying to find the outdoor light switch, so I could turn it on and look outside to see amazing weather phenomena and any of the night creatures who might be sneaking around our trailer while we’re in la-la land, I heard a squeaky mouse voice.

Picture
Mouse-hunting Fox in our Yard
I heard the voice just after I’d stubbed my toe on the kitchen chair. His utterances drifted up from the bowels of the trailer’s internal workings. And the lecture seemed to be about our traps and how to escape from them.

I specifically heard this bit of scholarly conversation:  “Squeaky, let’s say you’re eating a meal in what you assumed was a mouse greasy-spoon diner. And let’s say you’ve just finished your peanut butter meal and you’re ready to leave a tip and be gone. You get to the exit and my gosh, there’s a metal barrier in front of you and you can’t find a way out. What do you do?”

“Don’t panic, Sir Houdini.”

“That’s the very first thing you do. You don’t panic. You sit down and assess the situation. Then what do you do? Anybody else? Nobody? Okay, what we’re going to do is go visit a live trap which has been conveniently set up for our instruction and edification. And when we’re finished, you’re going to know it from head to stern. You’ll all be able to take one apart and put it back together with your eyes closed and you’ll all be able to weasel your way out of the traps as if there were no tomorrow. Just think how much this will improve your quality of life!

“Follow me, please and don’t forget to pray for our comrades who have been forced to emigrate from our home-sweet-home.”

And my, oh my! I could hear such a scurrying and a sliding in our walls and under our floor. I thought, “My god, how many of them are there?”

I wished I hadn’t watched the movie, ‘Willard’ earlier in the evening.

Later on, when I was back in bed, I could hear the sound of those unescapable hinges and doors opening and closing. Which, I assumed, were caused by the mice practising their escape skills.
***
Picture
ICE GLISTENING ON MOUNTAIN
A few days ago, I went searching for a Houdini-escape-proof live trap. I visited the local hardware store, but they didn’t have any other live traps.

They did have a rather intriguing death trap. I didn’t buy it. It was a deadly trap that looked like a live trap, but wasn’t. 

It was a contraption that had a foyer, as does my now-useless-after-Houdini-returned-live-easy-to-escape-trap. However, inside the peanut butter room, it had some kind of killing machine. When the mouse entered, it zapped the mouse into infinity before the poor mouse had a chance to chow down on one morsel. Theoretically, one only had to remove the trap’s roof and remove the dead mouse. Hopefully, completely dead and not suffering.

Picture
Icy Mountain Dwarfs My Truck
***
Are there any other reasons, besides the reasons I gave in Blog 63, for my not buying traps which kill mice? Yes, there are.

You see, last summer, I purposely let a wasp nest be. This experiment is also described in an earlier blog post. The nest thrived under my step-ladder for the whole summer until it was blown away by a hurricane.

The experiment, in my mind, was a success, except of course for the hurricane disaster. Because, in spite of all the chitter-chatter about how mean wasps are, those wasps and I thrived. And in spite of the fact that the nest was only around the corner beside the wood-shed,  where I often ate and drank, we got along splendidly.

Only a few, maybe ten wasps, came close to me. Cross my heart! And I believe it was only out of curiosity and maybe to make sure the terms of our treaty were being followed.  Why, they gave me less trouble than a neighbour dropping around to borrow some sugar or to drop off religious pamphlets.

I do, however, worry about the cold weather and other hazards the mice must face, but these are genuine field mice and they know how to survive.

Plus, I did some research and learned that the fairly radical animal rights organization called PETA has declared that releasing them into the wild is the most humane way of treating your wild field mice intruders.

“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—-not fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
                                                                                                Henry Thoreau, "Walden"

Picture
Ice Art
Picture
Winter Wonderland

I don’t want to state that my mouse and wasp handling techniques could be applied to the situation the world is finding itself in, but I will. Because there is an elephant charging around in our only earth’s very large foyer and this elephantoid creature’s name isn’t Jumbo.

So, I think that my experiment might be applied to some governments and might be an alternative approach to how they perceive and treat foreigners and strangers. Because I think there are all kinds of ways of being a good Samaritan.

Plus, when I see our ‘AS-WE-MOVE-FORWARD’ society relentlessly and thoughtlessly injuring, destroying, or being unaware of the infinite number of living organisms that are part of our world, well, I think my experiment was worthwhile.


“It is only when the gods finally begin to die completely out of the land and when many human beings begin to live totally divorced from nature -at the beginning, that is, of the modern age-that landscape painting, picturesque architecture and landscape description——become the obsessive themes of art.”
                                                                                                                          Vincent Scully

***
Picture
Too Much Snow For Buster
Picture
My Old Truck
I think the mystery of why all our Evening Grosbeaks have disappeared has been solved. We usually have about forty-to-sixty of them in the winter. A hardware store employee told me that an agile hawk will scare them away.

We’d had an agile hawk hunting around our bird feeders just before the grosbeaks disappeared. The grosbeaks, apparently, got out of town and are now supping at our friend’s bird feeder, which is situated in downtown Baddeck.

We hope they come back next year.

Picture
Sue and Buster on their daily walk down our road
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Houdini

20/1/2017

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Picture
Mountains on Warren Lake Hike
On Saturday, four of us tried to hike around Warren Lake, a gorgeous trail located in the Highlands National Park, not far from Ingonish.

Did you note the phrase, ‘tried to hike’?  Please consider this blog introduction to be a brief reminder to self and to others to always read the sign-board, located at the trail-head, before you begin hiking the trail.  We didn’t.

I didn’t because I expected to read the same warnings that are on all the sign boards, like: Don’t run if confronted by a coyote. Make yourself look big.  Play dead if you are attacked by a bear. Make a loud noise. Fight back if attacked. If charged by a moose, say five Hail Marys and find a big tree to dive behind or find a big tree to dive behind and say five Hail Marys.

Anyway, not one of us did more than turbo eye-ball the sign before we all cluelessly ventured forth and found out, after covering half the trail’s distance, that we couldn’t get over the fast flowing, very cold river which separated us from the rest of the trail. BECAUSE THE *$%^& BRIDGE WAS GONE!

The sign we didn’t read was this one: 

Picture
***
Picture
I have decided to change my behaviour towards another of God’s wee creatures. Mice. It is one mouse in particular who got me to change my ways. I call him, 'Wee Houdini'. This little mouse is escape talented.

Now, I want to declare, right off the top, that the mice around here have been troublesome.  Take, for example, the year I stored my spanking new snowblower in the tool shed and the mice, during the summer, chewed, twisted and bent the rubber gas line into something more amenable to a mouse’s needs.  First time I needed the blower, for snow-blowing purposes, guess what? It wouldn’t start and it was off to a small engine shop where they replaced the gas line.  The next winter, when I wanted to use the snow-blower, the belt broke. It was off, once again, to a small engine shop to fetch a belt. I’d decided I’d be the man and install it myself.

So, there we were. Me putting on the belt and Sue, using needle-nosed pliers to surgically pick wee mouse faces, feet and other sundry pieces of mouse body parts out of the belt housing.

Apparently, when I’d started the snowblower, the belt had torn the crap out of the mouse nest and the poor mice. Very sad and most disturbing, if you let your imagination run freely.

Oh, and by the way, no matter how many people tell you that moth balls keep mice away, all I can say is they haven’t worked for us. Maybe our mice wore gas masks. Who knows? But when I placed moth balls around the snow-blower motor and other parts, all I got was mice construction.


Once I sprinkled moth balls around in my hockey bag, before I stored it in the tool shed over the summer. When the next hockey season began, I received some cute remarks from a couple of hockey players after unzipping my hockey bag in the locker room let the sweet, delicious odour of moth balls escape.

One guy, who sat beside me, said, as he was breathing in the moth ball scent, “I love the smell of moth balls.”

Another fella said, “The smell reminds me of my grandmother.”  Now isn’t that cute? And he was one heck of a big hockey player.

So, I can imagine a mouse saying, “Moth balls remind me of the old Christmas cake I munched on in grandma’s cupboard.”


Picture
BUSTER WATCHING CNN AND WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE
One year I decided to rid the tool shed of mice. So, I got the traps, baited them with peanut butter and set them in different locations in the tool shed.

Every morning I’d check to see how many mouse pelts I’d captured. I’d find dead mice in traps, traps that hadn’t been touched, traps with live mice in them or a missing trap. The last scenario was the most worrisome. Where was the trap? Was there a mouse caught in it? Was it suffering or dead? Quite an existential dread would often overcome me.

I did this for a few weeks, but because of the above worries I decided to let the mice enjoy the tool shed. In order to do this, I made sure all our valuables were in sealed plastic containers.  Of course, this disappointed the crows, who’d quickly learned that mouse steaks were appearing on the lawn like clock-work. Every morning a row of crows would perch along the telephone wires waiting for the morning breakfast bell.

Sorry crows. Life is complicated. All nuanced up to its ass. You help one species at the cost of another.

Picture
The crows settled for the seeds dropped from our bird feeders
This year, when we knew there were mice in our trailer, I bought some simple and cheap wooden traps. I used peanut butter as bait and put a few traps inside the cupboards. These little traps were hair triggered. A light touch with a feather would cause them to viciously snap their jaws shut. But not, apparently, fast enough.

This one mouse was good. Really good. A Houdini. Because in the morning when I checked to see if I’d caught a mouse, I’d find a fat nothing. Always a big fat nothing. The peanut butter licked away as neatly as if done by a professional safe-cracker. No snap, snap, dead for this critter.


This happened three times. So, I bought another trap. A plastic one.

What you do is load the peanut butter bait inside a little compartment which has a hole in it. Then you place it under the sink, where you know they’re congregating for meals.
What should happen is that Houdini would smell the peanut butter, his addiction would kick in, and he’d carefully and stupidly stick his head into the little hole, causing the box to lift up, which would release the jaws of death and BAM!! Houdini is floating with his harp through his own personal heavenly portal.

The next morning there was the trap. It’s jaws had gone, chomp chomp, as per instructions and by the blood staining the area around the trap, the chomping had been down on a mouse. However, there was no mouse. Houdini had escaped again. What a guy! What a mouse!

That’s when I changed my tactics. I went to the hardware store and bought a live trap. It doesn’t kill.  What happens is the mouse enters the trap through a cute little foyer, walks up a ramp, steps off the ramp and is face to face with a tantalizingly delicious dollop of peanut butter. However, when he is finished chowing down he is trapped. Because the exit is sealed.

The next morning, there he was. Inside the trap.  Now, do you know how far you’re supposed to take the little fella before you release him. Two miles. Two friggen miles!

The other problem was that we were trapped in the trailer. Because we live in a snow belt, and by the way, for all those who think they are getting accurate weather reports about our area, forget it. For an accurate forecast of our weather conditions you will have to go to: www.twilightzonegrabursnowhoes.com!  
Picture
THIS GUY DIDN’T GET THE CORRECT SNOW FORECAST!
It was very hard to walk two miles, since our road was basically closed. Plus it was very cold and I didn’t want poor Houdini to freeze his little ass off.  So, I got a box and cut a door-hole in it. Duct taped down the top, put toilet paper, tissue, and newspaper inside the box along with some bread, peanuts and cheese.  I put this box in a bag, along with Houdini and the cage. Strapped on a pair of snowshoes and merrily flip-flopped through the snow, which was in some places up to my waist. Trudged on for maybe half a kilometre. 

Took wee Houdini to a nice little place, which I won’t describe, but I will say it wasn’t a place that was owned by anybody I liked.

Picture
Houdini's New Home

Struggled to the back of the little building, put the portable home under the structure, covered it with some snow, so as to weigh it down and then opened the cage.  Houdini popped his head out and then ran like hell.

The problem is, I didn’t take him two miles from our place and, NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! I caught another mouse last night and this morning I found the cage, empty and with the peanut butter all licked away.

Is Houdini back? Has he held escape workshops and do we now have a whole crapload of intelligent mice who have escape diplomas?  Are we, although living in a forty-five foot trailer in the woods, actually witnessing Darwin’s theory of evolution speeding up? 

Why, last night, I said to Sue, “Write it all down, my love. We’re going to be more famous than Darwin.”

“Write it down yourself, my love. I’ll edit it. That’s my job.”

Evolution. Houdini...and sometimes I wonder which way I’m evolving. 

                         Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
                         My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm? --
                         To run under the hawk's wing,
                         Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
                         To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.

                         I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
                         The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
                         The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,--
                         All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

                                                                                    Theodore Roethke, The Field Mouse

Picture
Enormous Waves in Green Cove in Cape Breton Highland National Park
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