The mouse invasion has begun. At work, we have caught 9 mice in our mousetraps so far this summer, and 8 baby mice have fallen from the ceiling. Fratricide is suspected.
My Goretex coat fell victim to one mouse's nest-making schemes: it chewed its way down the front of my collar and button-flap, then deposited the fabric, along with bits and pieces of my fleece coat, into a coworker's shoe. (This was after I found mouse turds in my own shoes). All of these articles of clothing, by the way, were in our "mouse-proof" cabinets in the staff area, but, as our boss pointed out, it's only mouse-proof as long as you shut the doors. Since many of us use the cabinets, the doors tend to stay open during the day. No longer. We've always found mouse turds in lovely places like on top of our staff microwave, or on the computer keyboards, but this is the first time that the mice have appeared with such abandon. Out of all the hazards at work (including being charged by black bears and mama moose), I'm probably most worried about the mice--deer mice are, after all, the main carriers of Hanta virus.
We suspect that there's at least one mouse nest in the ceiling, specifically in our "soundscape" room, where visitors can enjoy a compilation of many of the Preserve's natural sounds, recorded over several seasons and played back in surround-sound. We've been finding baby mice, dead, injured, or stunned, on the soundscape room floor for the past several days, underneath a beam where they apparently like to frolic. This morning, when I did a check at 9am, there were no signs of falling mice, and by 10:30 or so, visitors had discovered 3. A woman I spoke with yesterday said that there had been no mice when she walked into the room, and when she came out ten minutes later, a slightly-flattened mouse was right in the doorway. Take-home message: watch your head?
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