Starting earlier this year I started to notice evidence of mice in the house (not uncommonly by catching sight of one of my cats – generally Raedthinn – dashing off with a captured mouse). But things apparently really took off after the cats and I left here for a few weeks. Upon return, it was obvious that the little rodenty monsters had decided to move in and take over the place. Since I’ve been back, cleanup operations and mouse combat have consumed way too much of my time – and may well have had a role in my recent, fortunately rather brief, illness.
So I’ve been contemplating the possibility that I have been failing Civilization 101… Step One, Get Rid Of The Mice. I’ve been here 8 years and never had anything remotely resembling this sort of problem before. So clearly I’ve been failing in *something,* right?
Well… maybe not. I’ve been asking around, and every neighbor I’ve talked to has noticed a *massive* increase in rodents in the last year, both inside and outside. One farmer now has to contend with large numbers of full-up *rats* which he’s never even seen before. So what’s up here?
This is farm country. As far as I can tell, the farmers have been doing what they’ve been doing for decades, without substantial change. Except for things relating to weather. Last winter was warm and dry… not as much snow as usual. Summer was hot and dry… almost no rain. One consequence of that is that a standard farm practice was greatly curtailed until very late in the season: the burning of the fields. It is my hypothesis that in normal years, the rodents live their furry, plague-bearing lives out in the fields… until all of a sudden a wall of fire comes along and roasts a fair number of them, and burns up the food for the rest, limiting the population. But this year… no fires. At least not near as many, and much later than usual (IIRC, they’re generally in July; this year, September). So, the rodent populations were able to expand without getting roasted, and had more to gnaw on for longer. Thus, there was a huge population of them when the fires did eventually come, driving them out of the burnt fields into other unburnt fields, barns, feed lots and houses.
Lesson:
