Three (Not Blind) Mice

The experts who published a a recent study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say mice have been living alongside humans for as long as 15,000 years. This is about 3,000 years earlier than the start of crop agriculture—the time it was long believed mice took up residence with humans.

Doing so allows them relatively good protection from being something else’s dinner and we provide them with food. It’s a pretty good deal for the mice. But for us? Not so much.

One of my favorite paintings at the St. Louis Art Museum, Still Life with Mice, painted in 1619 by Loedwik Susi, captures this relationship very well. I lightened it up a bit so that the third mouse lurking by the apple is a little more visible.

Mice have been living alongside us for as long as we have been in this house. They have chewed bits of our clothing to make nests under the chest of drawers, gotten into filing cabinets and chewed papers, and on it goes. I am not sure what word to attach to the feelings I have had on the occasions when I have opened the kitchen drawer to see mouse poop on the silverware.

One of them got inside our Krups.

 Once I caught 3 at one time in the bottom of the sunflower seed barrel.

And no, I could not bring myself to kill these mice. I took them for a ride and let them go in a wooded area a couple of miles from the house.

Usually, though, they are not looking up at us with their beady black eyes. Usually they quite dead when we find them on the business end of the mousetrap.

I suppose  I should not have been surprised very early the other morning when I was in the recliner reading the scripture for the day and taking the first sips of my coffee to catch some movement at the corner of my eye and looked up to see a mouse scurry across the carpet and behind the bookcase.

So the traps came out, and it took several days before the mouse made a mistake and went to wherever mice go when they are no longer with us.

We thought it best to re-bait the traps (I think he is using peanut butter or perhaps Nutella). This morning we caught another mouse in the living room in the trap right by my recliner and also a baby mouse in the fruit cellar. A baby mouse? Oy vey.

So we have now trapped 3 mice in the last two days, and where there are 1…2…3… mice there is certainly another one and, in this case, probably another... and another....and another... forever and ever.

The traps will stay baited and ready for a while.