Mice eat Bombay Mix

Who knew?

Apparently they also eat tuc crackers (cheese flavour crackers for the non-UKers), which I suppose isn't so surprising.

Of course you're wondering how I know all this, well we have a mouse, or maybe meeces, it's hard to tell if there's just one or more. As far as we can tell they're getting in through some holes that have been drilled into the outside of the kitchen wall. We had no idea they were there, and we don't know why they're there, but there they are, and according to the pest control guy who came to take a look, they're big enough for meeces to get through.

The first indication we had that there were rodents of some kind in the house was hearing scrabbling, skittering and gnawing in the ceiling voids at night. Kind of creepy when you hear it at 2am and don't know what it is. Some of you will probably say it's creepy when you do know what it is, but I don't really have a problem with mice per se. I have three cats, I'm used to them bringing rodents of all kinds into the house, dead and alive. I have to say the dead rat did creep me out a little, but not half as much as the live one, especially as it was big enough to escape back through the catflap on it's own.

The next thing I found was when I went into my baking cupboard. Bear in mind I haven't actually done any baking since we moved here, so the contents of this cupboard haven't really been disturbed for a while. I pulled the first bag of flour out and discovered that the whole of the bag of the bag had been destroyed and there was flour everywhere. Further investigation showed that the mice have a taste for plain and self raising flour, caster sugar, and icing sugar.

I cleared all the mess out and noticed that the back of the cupboard isn't solid all the way up (it's a floor cupboard by the way), there's a gap at the top, obviously where it/they had been getting in. I bought new baking products and relocated their storage, leaving the area where they had been, empty. The rest of the cupboard contains bottles of alcohol, and quite frankly if the little buggers can gnaw their way through the bottles then they're welcome to get, well, I suppose rat-arsed would be the appropriate term.

The next attack came on the fruit bowl. I guess they were getting desparate now. Several old apples had teeth marks and there were little bitty bits of apple all over the worktop behind the bowl. More cleaning and moving and now the little buggers really had to get clever.

This morning I found Ewok's bottle of medicine had fallen on the worktop from the corner shelf where it lives. Then I noticed that all the empty egg boxes that I store on top of the fridge/freezer had been disturbed. So I got the steps and climbed up for a better look. We keep the crisps, biscuits, cakes etc on top of the fridge. There had been a half pack of tuc crackers up there, now there were only crumbs and shredded bits of plastic packaging. More cleaning up and securing of foodstuffs in boxes. I also decided to tidy up the corner shelves where the medicines are kept and that was when I found the bombay mix debris. It had been put up on one of the shelves and forgotten about, again it had been about half full, and the little buggers had scoffed the lot!

Part of me is intrigued to see what they're going to find to eat now. They've got until the weekend, because that's when we're going shopping for traps*, and something to fill in the holes.



* Yes, humane ones, alright.