Mice Wars Part 2: Stealth Invasion
Jan. 29th, 2022 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWhen last we played Mice Wars, the issue was a hot conflict wherein Rogue Meeses were Invading The Kitchen (likely through the stove wire access hole) and shitting all over my countertops. It was a highly active conflict put to rest by way of traps set on the stovetop overnight and morning-after dead meeses and also pulling out the stove and addressing the hole around the stove power cable coming through the wall so that it was way less... spacious for meeses.
The mouse poop on the countertops stopped after like five dead meeses and the un-making of the hole around the stove power cord, so I was like YAY Mice Wars Over and I am VICTORIOUS! Ibeat my swords into plowshares put away my mousetraps after a final bleach rinse of the countertops and prepared to rest upon my laurels for the remainder of the winter.
There was for real celebrating once all was quiet on the Western Front. (The Western Front was the trench warfare thing between the Germans and the Good Guys in World War 1. All Quiet on the Western Front is a pretty solid anti-war book by Erich Remarque. But if you don't have time for a whole anti-war book, you can read Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. I certainly hope you've read Dulce et Decorum Est prior to this, but if you haven't had the chance, here ya go.
Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Yeah, okay, that is kind of a downer. So's All Quiet on the Western Front.
I can only hope that the people who send soldiers to die do so only as a last resort after all nonviolent means have failed. I hope that they know they're spending unbearably dear coin and therefore spend frugally, always for best value.)
But alas my victory in the mice wars was premature. After... startling a mouse in the bathroom so that the mouse and I were doing the sidewalk dance of "You go that way, I'll go...no, wait, the other way, argh, damn it", I determined that the mice had gnawed a hole in the wall around where the toilet pipe (incoming water, not outgoing sewage) came in. Mice can fit through fairly small holes, smaller than you think. Anyway, I covered the hole with steel mesh (I have some very fine, stainless-steel mesh leftover from a project. It cuts well with tin snips.) and drywall-pasted that in place. Figured I was good to go.
I was not good to go. *sigh* Mouse poop subsequently appeared in the kitchen junk drawer where heretofore there had not been any mouse poop. So, I looked under the sink in the kitchen. (Standard kitchen drawers do not enclose at the top. A determined mouse can crawl through the pipe access holes under the sink, crawl up stuff stored under the sink, and then over-the-wall and down into a drawer. Ew.
Under the sink, two pipes and a drain come through the walls. They're none of them the bestest in terms of fit. So I cut steel mesh for those, as well, and then packed the eensy little cracks tight with coarse steel wool. No mice now fit in through the holes under the sink.
I'd previously fixed the holes under the stove (during Mice Wars Round 1), so now there's nothing to do but watch and wait. And, obviously, clean out every drawer in the kitchen. Again.
*sigh*
At least it's cold out and cleaning the drawers is a nice, indoor activity in the warm.
The mouse poop on the countertops stopped after like five dead meeses and the un-making of the hole around the stove power cord, so I was like YAY Mice Wars Over and I am VICTORIOUS! I
There was for real celebrating once all was quiet on the Western Front. (The Western Front was the trench warfare thing between the Germans and the Good Guys in World War 1. All Quiet on the Western Front is a pretty solid anti-war book by Erich Remarque. But if you don't have time for a whole anti-war book, you can read Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. I certainly hope you've read Dulce et Decorum Est prior to this, but if you haven't had the chance, here ya go.
Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Yeah, okay, that is kind of a downer. So's All Quiet on the Western Front.
I can only hope that the people who send soldiers to die do so only as a last resort after all nonviolent means have failed. I hope that they know they're spending unbearably dear coin and therefore spend frugally, always for best value.)
But alas my victory in the mice wars was premature. After... startling a mouse in the bathroom so that the mouse and I were doing the sidewalk dance of "You go that way, I'll go...no, wait, the other way, argh, damn it", I determined that the mice had gnawed a hole in the wall around where the toilet pipe (incoming water, not outgoing sewage) came in. Mice can fit through fairly small holes, smaller than you think. Anyway, I covered the hole with steel mesh (I have some very fine, stainless-steel mesh leftover from a project. It cuts well with tin snips.) and drywall-pasted that in place. Figured I was good to go.
I was not good to go. *sigh* Mouse poop subsequently appeared in the kitchen junk drawer where heretofore there had not been any mouse poop. So, I looked under the sink in the kitchen. (Standard kitchen drawers do not enclose at the top. A determined mouse can crawl through the pipe access holes under the sink, crawl up stuff stored under the sink, and then over-the-wall and down into a drawer. Ew.
Under the sink, two pipes and a drain come through the walls. They're none of them the bestest in terms of fit. So I cut steel mesh for those, as well, and then packed the eensy little cracks tight with coarse steel wool. No mice now fit in through the holes under the sink.
I'd previously fixed the holes under the stove (during Mice Wars Round 1), so now there's nothing to do but watch and wait. And, obviously, clean out every drawer in the kitchen. Again.
*sigh*
At least it's cold out and cleaning the drawers is a nice, indoor activity in the warm.
