One of the mouse traps in the greenhouse finally caught a mouse. I felt sorry for it as I tipped its little body into the hedge, but remembered how I lost almost every potted species tulip and fritillary bulb last winter. It looked like a clean kill, the creature's back must have been broken instantly. I then found a mouse nest in the pot of nuts meant for baiting the traps. They were originally meant for the bird table, but got too old, and I'd put the lid of the plastic storage jug on the wrong way round so that mice could get in through the spout, so the one in the trap died in vain. It could have been living in peanuts, if only it had looked in the right place. I reset the trap, covered it with a fruit punnet to keep any birds off, and put the lid on the peanuts properly.
The rats under the shed are another matter. Their number was reduced by one when Our Ginger left a large rat, minus its face and one front leg, in front of the television the other night, but this is one reason why I am so reluctant to use rodenticides. Apart from the risk of poisoning domestic pets, they end up in the wild food chain, with traces being found in many dead owls and kestrels. We tried a sonic rat and mouse repeller as our opening shot, but while it may or may not have irritated them, it certainly didn't shift them. I've been trying to flood them out, since I'm sure they won't live in mud long term, but in the short term they seem determined to tough it out. Next we introduced a battery powered rat zapper into the armoury, the theory being that the rat goes into the device to take food, and completes a circuit. Bang, one electrocuted rat. A light will flash on the box when you've caught one, and as the blurb says, you need never touch another dead rat or mouse again, but so far I've only had false alarms, which might mean that the device is getting damp. The Systems Administrator was particularly taken by Amazon's question whether this item was a gift.
I was all for trying the yellow sticky paper, recommended by other country living friends who grapple with rats under the shed. Sorry, but that's how country life is, full of rats. It looks like giant fly paper for rodents, and comes with solvent for releasing non-target species. The SA was initially willing to carry out the humane dispatch with an air rifle, but then began to worry about what we would do with them afterwards. We couldn't just chuck them into the wood for the foxes to clear up because other things would stick to the paper. We'll have to keep on with the flooding and the zapper for a few more days. Rats being quite bright animals and suspicious of new things, they probably won't go in it for a couple of weeks anyway. In the meantime the chickens are having to live on two meals a day, with no food being left outside overnight.
Putting the rodent problem in perspective, I am so relieved that neither of us commute any more. There were huge delays and cancellations last Friday evening, though that was due to a fatality on the tracks and not the fault of any of the railway companies. There was chaos again on Monday morning due to not one but two broken down freight trains, and more delays this morning because of defective track at Manor Park. Meanwhile, a security alert at Stratford meant that trains that did manage to run into London didn't stop there. It is desperate. 1.4 million people live in Essex, and we are connected to the capital by a joke railway system and two wholly inadequate roads. According to the Essex County Council website there are forecast to be another quarter of a million of us by 2025, but I hope none of them ever want to leave their homes, except on foot, since there isn't going to be room for them on the roads or the trains.
A friend who still endures the commute says darkly that some people will end up losing their jobs, if they keep being late because of the trains. Most organisations do not like you to be late, whatever their line of business. The hapless commuters' get-out clause might be that their employers won't be able to replace all of them with London based staff, because nobody doing their jobs on their salaries could afford to live in London.
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