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What’s one of the most disconcerting things you can see just as you’re about to hop into bed?
How about mouse droppings on your chest of drawers?
Hopefully when it (surely there is no they!!??!!) saw that there was no food in the bedroom it went next door where perhaps she eats in bed!
All food in our kitchen is either in the fridge, the microwave (yes, really) or containers so perhaps it was a starving mouse on a foraging expedition. I dare not think that a mouse has decided it needs both a bedroom and a kitchen.
In the early ’70s there was a mice plague in the shire our farm was in. My parents plugged up the house with steel wool but the occasional mouse still got in ( they do nibble steel wool!)… One night a mouse got into my bed and became entangled in my then long hair. Much screaming ensured and removal involved parental intervention and scissors! The episode made me a pretty nervous sleeper until they died out.
After cleaning up the little “gifts” last night I looked around for more evidence but didn’t find any – nor a real mouse (thank God) – but, it freaked me out all night. Every rustle was a mouse, or mice, getting into the bed!
I wish we had a cat!
Aussie Emjay's Blog 
Oh Emjay, I feel for you there! Definitely not a nice thing to discover before going to bed. You must have been traumatized as a child when that one was caught in your hair. How scary! We had mice in my old condo back east. I found evidence and could also hear them running through the walls at night. After that I made sure that any food was placed away or in an airtight container. I didn’t set any traps because I couldn’t bear the thought of killing one, but by placing the food away they did eventually leave to forage elsewhere.
That’s what we have found also – we used to find packets of food things nibbled through and gradually got enough tough plastic or containers to have everything put away. We still occasionally see one (or evidence of one) in the kitchen but they soon go next door when they realise there is no banquet for them here (one of the advantages of a row house is that they don’t even need to go outside to get next door LOL).
Gack, if a mouse got tangled in my hair I’d be traumatized for life! I guess I’d better keep mine short and mouse-free.
But it seems odd that the mouse would take a poop on your chest of drawers. They usually like hiding in corners or closets or inside cabinets. Maybe it got lost while looking for your neighbor’s crumb-filled bed?
Yesterday I got the manservant to carry a pile of blankets I’d had next to the drawers outside and shake them. I was pretty convinced a nest of mice would fall out LOL… We never have food in the bedroom (I’m anti eating in bed) so I hope it/they left when they realised that – though a lot of people here have suggested they might be nesting down for winter! (scary thought).
OMG! That is too funny. I can’t imagine how horrified you were when that happened as a child. I live in the woods so field mice will always be around no matter what. Night before last we had taken the garbage bag out of the can and tied it up and didn’t put a new bag in the can yet. I was in the bathroom and the kids came running in there laughing and yelling, “Grammy, come here and look!” I got in there and two tiny field mice and climbed down in the empty garbage can and couldn’t get back out. I was worried it would upset them but instead they were trying to talk me into keeping them as pets. I said “NO! Absolutely not! These are not the pet kind of mice!” It was comical.
By the way, I was cleaning out the car yesterday (I am bad to pile mail up in there and leave it) and found your post card! I’m so sorry. I was so excited when I found it and the girls thought it was awesome that someone sent me something all the way from Australia! So thank you very much for thinking about me while you were gone. It ended up being a thrill for all three of us!
LOL re keeping the field mice as pets. I work with a lady who kept a couple of mice she caught for a while – she eventually took them out into the country and let them go. I wonder what the meeting of the town mice and the country mice was like .. … 🙂
That’s funny about the postcard! Someone at work only got theirs on Thursday from the PO.
Oh dear! That must have been such a traumatizing experience for you!!! :S :S :S I hate mice. I’ve seen one run across my room once and I freaked out. I have that same fear about mice in bed…
But I have a cat… XD Hope it doesn’t show up again!!
One of my friends has a cat who sat and watched a mouse come out of the wall, scamper over to the cat bowl and nibble the food!!
We deal with them in the Fall/Winter when they come in out of the cold. Last year was especially bad. I think we caught/killed two or three dozen. And we even have a cat, who likes to chase and catch mice. Ugh. Growing up, we had all sorts of hamsters, gerbils and the like, which were always getting out of their cages, so no worries there. LOL
It’s funny – we get the furry things coming in from the cold in fall/winter and the cockroaches showing themselves in summer. The joys of row houses! One of my sisters used to have guinea pigs – they look remarkably like rats when they get wet!
We get visits from mice every fall when the weather gets cooler. We use the sticky traps and the old fashioned traps. We usually catch one or two and that is all. I hope that is all you have!!
I think I will get, and put, a couple of sticky traps in the bedroom and see if anything is captured. I don’t think I’d like the snapping sound of the old fashioned trap going off in the middle of the night 🙂
Trade you rats in the kitchen ceiling for a mouse/mice on the dresser, deal?
LOL – sorry that doesn’t sound like much of a deal…. :-0
And here I was looking for a mouse all this week and you have one….
Today with all these new traps for catching mice you can get rid of what you might have but this is why I always hated to live in the city and in apartment buildings for you never know what your neighbors are up too they could be breeding mice in there home and a few got loose so no matter how clean you keep your place you could even get infested with fleas from something your neighbors did … I can picture you standing on a stool looking for mice with broom in hand!
Good luck they might just have been house sitting for you while you were away!
LOL @ the mice housesitting! Perhaps in the few days the manservant was home without me, he had breakfast in bed! I guess you need mice for your pets – they are pretty easy to breed. And, yes you are right about not knowing what the neighbours are breeding 🙂
I dunno, I still think the magpie stuck in the ladies hair that Mum told me about would be worse. I’ve had a tremendous fear of magpies since she told me that. I don’t care if they peck me but the thought of one having its talons stuck in my hair freaks me out. I woke up the other night because someone sent me a text in the middle of the night and when I turned on the light I saw a spider running across my pillow.
LOL – mum told me about someone getting a bat tangled in their hair too. I think it was her tactic for trying to get us to keep our hair short! I can go to sleep with a spider on the wall – wouldn’t like to see one on my pillow though – that probably means it was crawling over your face.
Ick! We got a live trap that works REALLY well. But you have to take the mousies far, far away or they’ll find their way right back in!
Yeah – one of the disadvantages of living in row houses is that we can get rid of all our pests but if the places either side don’t then things keep reappearing.
I think Eddy (my cat) has very reasonable consulting rates.
LOL – Eddy’s travel expenses might be steep though. I’ve tried to encourage the alley cats to come inside…. they are not keen.
i thought you were going to say a mouse…then mouse dropping IN YOUR BED.
I seem to recall my mom finding old extra sheets in a linen closet that had been chewed through once, but no other evidence.
That is pretty horrifying to find in your bedroom. I’ve had them in my kitchen (old and dirty and full of holes as it is, but *knock wood looking particleboard* haven’t seen any new turds in my drawers in a couple years.
and yeah, this is the time of year they seek shelter, ugh. I used to sotre my outdoor cushions in my garage till I found out they were being used as a home & potty for meeces.
And the story about your hair! OMG I’d be traumatized for life.
Yeah back in Sydney when I was packing stuff to move out I found chewed sheets and blankets – pretty gross to think they were playing in the linen closet just below the things we were pulling out. I got the manservant to shake out some blankets that had been near the drawers but nothing furry fell out – and there were no little nibbled corners. I will have to go through a few piles of folded clothes I have in the bottom of the wardrobe though …
We get the occasional mouse in the kitchen (and have even been watching TV when one has run past the couch!) but they usually move on when they realise there is nothing to eat. The bedroom is the opposite end of the house and up a flight of stairs – quite a trip for a little mousey!
A mouse tangled in my hair would have been very creepy and upsetting for sure. Turds on the night stand would really be creepy too. It looks like it must have headed for more abundant territories.
Yes – I hope they were going away gifts! 🙂 The first thing I usually think about now when creatures are flapping about is “don’t let it get in my hair; don’t let it get in my hair!”
I hate mice I see them as nasty, scary monsters 😯
It’s funny how we find something sort of cute looking to be so nasty isn’t it! 🙂
Oh God! I am having a panicking feeling just by reading it. In other words you have the same thing about mice that I have with spiders. If I know there is one in the room – I will not go to sleep until I have hunted it down and killed it. Yak! Hope that visitors of yours is already by-gone.
My mother used to say that most of the house spiders were “harmless” – it’s hard to talk yourself into believing that when you see a huntsman that’s as big as a saucer! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spider in this house – obviously we have something way more evil eating them! 🙂
If you got droppings, you’ve probably got more than one. Bet they are looking for a place to spend the winter. Mouse traps of some kind are in order
Yeah – they are like cockroaches – if you see one there’s bound to be a whole family tree around too. There have been no more droppings but I think I will get a couple of those sticky traps to put around – though hopefully it/they have come back downstairs.
We have just had a mouse infestation in the seed shed. Son has become quite the mouse hunter, though his dinner conversation is not always for gentle souls as he likes to tell us graphically how their ears flop limply as they die. He evens does hand gestures to illustrate.
LOL @ your son! We had a Doberman during the mouse plague I mention and she used to love going to the silo and wheat shed. As my father moved a wheat bag zillions of mice would run out (it was like having an undulating carpet), and she would run in and literally snap necks – she was really efficient!
Get those baited traps out Emjay – there’s never just the one mouse!
I don’t think I would like the noise of a trap snapping in that deep silence in the dead of night. I’m going to try the sticky ones – hopefully it/they have come downstairs where they can nibble crumbs dropped on the kitchen floor by the manservant 😉
We used to have a great mouser. Except that he’d bring the poor things inside to torture them. Then, invariably, he’d lose the mouse. All this in the middle of the night. Once the mouse found his way under the covers, trying to escape, and ran up along my leg! Needless to say, there ensued much screaming and jumping around, and tossing of covers about. Poor husband thought I overreacted. Hmph. Couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.
LOL at your husband thinking you’d overreacted. That’s what my manservant would think too – must be a man thing. I suppose it did no good to say to your cat “don’t play with your food” .. .. (something my mother was fond of saying after she’d served me corned beef and peas for dinner).
Wow, “parental intervention and scissors” lol. I am glad that you lived through such an traumatic experience.
“Parental intervention” tended to be harsher in all areas in those days than it is now. 🙂
Hm, I’m not sure which is worse, a mouse in the house or a chipmunk in the house. We’ve had a chipmunk in the house for several months (since sometime in June, I think; it used to saunter around and eat the cat’s food right under my nose while I was sitting at the computer studying. I’d always wanted to see a chipmunk, but not at quite such close quarters! The cat, of course, took absolutely no notice of it although she did bring in a dead chipmunk from outside one day last week. However, earlier this week I had an inspiration – leave the back door open with the cat’s food and water right on the edge of the doorway, and maybe Chippy would take the hint and go outside. (We’d tried a humane trap baited with cat food and peanut butter, but no luck.) Well, since leaving the back door open two days in a row, we have not seen or heard anything of Chippy, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that he/she took the opportunity to escape.
Oooh! I’ve only seen chipmunks in the zoo – like you I probably wouldn’t want to see one that closely but I did laugh at it sauntering past you to eat the cat food!
We have a raccoon that comes up to our top deck and lies in one of the flower pots! It dug a huge hole, displacing the plant, and curls up in there. I keep reminding the manservant how important it is to keep the deck door locked because I don’t want it inside the house. I’ve read how they can open those light weight screen doors with their little “hands”.
I could think of about a million things I’d find a lot more disconcerting to find just as I was going to bed than mouse droppings … although that wouldn’t be fun either.
Yes true GOM but most of those things could probably be dealt with at the time – 🙂
The droppings would not be as disconcerting to me since I live in a rural area and we deal with mice getting in the house all the time, but I can see how it would be so disconcerting for you. Your childhood experience was so traumatic.
I know everyone has suggested getting out the traps and those are great, but no matter which ones they are, the live or the killing kind, you have to check them often so you do not end up with a dying mouse stinking up your place. (cause even if you use a live trap, if you do not check it often the mouse could die in there from starvation).
Something I do to keep the mice out of my cupboards is to sprinkle a small amount of dried mint leaves in them. One time ages ago I was reading about herbs and all the various uses for them, both as food and non-food uses. When I read that mice, for whatever reason, do not like mint I figured I would give it a try. As soon as I started putting the mint leaves in the cupboard the mice activity disappeared. In the beginning I had to replace the mint often to make sure the smell was a strong enough to deter the mice, but once they got used to it being there I did not have to change it very often. Now I have never tried it but I suppose you could use mint extract on a piece of cloth or a cotton ball to get the same results. That may be a nice things for in and around your bedroom, it will smell nice and will help convince the mice to stay out of your room.
Actually I have a bottle of peppermint oil which I use in the kitchen to keep them away (or try to) – it makes the kitchen smell quite lovely for about a week. I just dab a bit on paper towel and shove it down the back of the cupboard.
For about a week last year I kept saying to the manservant – what’s that horrible smell? did you track dog poo inside? etc etc. Then it gradually died away. About a month later I was doing a thorough cleaning under a cabinet in the dining room and found a dead mouse under a box! It must’ve died of natural causes though (or perhaps poison from next door) as we did not have any traps or poison out at the time.
I have to say that even though I would not want mouse droppings in my house, I do find that very few creatures horrify me. Big cockroaches (and small ones, actually) do…when I was a child a big cockroach flew onto my tummy and bit me. I will forever be a bit frightened of them.
I think of it this way: animals were here before us…and have the right to exist. Sorry if I sound all Grateful Dead and such (I don’t like the Dead, by the way). If you can avoid killing the mouse, it would be the nicer thing to do. Kindness traps do work. I like the mint thing, I never heard of that but I will remember it. I have used cayenne pepper (a mouse was eating my olive oil soap bar).
And there is always the getting a lovely cat!
Oh – that’s creepy about the cockroach biting you!
I use peppermint oil in the kitchen and I also have those electronic things plugged in there. Although we occasionally see a mouse in there it’s usually only obvious for a day or two – I think because there is nothing for them to eat and it’s so easy for them to go to either of our next door neighbours.
I was surprised to see one/multiple had made it up to the bedroom – it’s at the opposite end of the house and up a flight of stairs. Mice need to eat 15-20 times a day so hopefully when it didnt’ find real food it left the room rather than burrowing down into my clothes and eating them! 🙂
Oh, horrors… The hair story is about as bad a rodent tale as I’ve ever heard!
Isn’t it disgusting! Now whenever anything is flapping around me I immediately start to fear that it’s going to get caught in my hair.
I keep food in yhe microwave also. I have a loaf of freshly baked pumpkin bread in there now. Even with three cats we find a rare turd now and again and have even caught the cats playing with mice. But we live near a huge field and when it gets cold, in they come. Our cats see them as visitors rahter than vermin and will sit and look at them only mildly interested.
LOL @ your cats observing the visiting mice! Most people laugh when they see I have food in the microwave – currently I have some fancy biscuits (cookies) that a guest brought over last night, some nuts and a couple of blocks of Quinoa chocolate. The strangest thing I’ve ever had a mouse eat is half a packet of the tuna that comes in those tough foil packets. Now we keep those in the fridge…
Eek! Gross. I’m probably repeating what others have said but I’ve been there too. We stored clothes in plastic buckets in our attic, and sunflower seeds on our back porch (and in the bird feeder, of course). One time I tore throught an attic bucket looking for a jacket, and forgot to close the lid. Well, winter showed up and lo and behold, the bottom of the jacket bucket was filled with mouse droppings and eaten sunflower seeds. The little jerks had been storing food and sleeping under my jackets. Eew!
Many multiple washes ensued and all buckets and food were sealed tight. Haven’t had the trouble since. No unsealed food, no mice. That’s all there is to it. Keep in mind they can even eat types of wood (they tore into my cedar cat litter after I sealed the food). We had to seal holes in the house as well.
But yeah, cats are so freaking awesome. The 4 downstairs have nailed loads of mice. Reminds me why we domesticated them to begin with.
Now Emmi I think if I found mice living in my clothes I might be tempted to throw them away. I think everytime I put the clothes on I would start imaging mice running around in them; sleeping; fornicating & nesting in them ……… and I would start to seriously itch! 🙂
Cats is good. They earn their keeps. Get a female. They do a better job.
Females are better at most things 🙂
I was going to take exception to that remark, but the truth is, I have tried repeatedly to catch mice using my teeth and claws, and I’m just awful at it! 😀
Oh, mouse in the hair! That is a creepy experience.
I have enough cats that there’s not a mouse problem here. I worry about spiders though. They definitely scare me!
I can’t remember ever seeing a spider in the house during the 3 years we’ve been here. Mice, cockroaches, weird little bugs (silverfish?) but not spiders – not sure why that would be.
I’m not bothered by mice although granted I wouldn’t like to find mouse poop on the pillow. No, the worst thing I could spot as I’m hopping into bed would be one of those giant house spiders sitting on the pillow next to my head. Once they weaned me off the tranquilisers I’d have to be shot with to stop me screaming, I’d probably burn the bedclothes and move house. Bloody hate the things.
There used to be huge Huntsmen spiders in the house where I grew up – mum would try to get them outside by slipping a piece of paper under them and then carrying it!!!! I tended more towards drowning them in insect spray! I could never put my feet into shoes without banging them on a wall first – Funnel Web spiders were deadly before they worked out the formula for the anti-venom.