I came out to friends plus family this week. I told them of my feelings of shame, self-revulsion plus uncleanliness. But I was comforted to discover that I’m far from alone. It seems there’s at least one in almost every home in the country. Mice, that is.
I was alerted by the lovely kid next door. “A mouse jumped out of our fridge,” he exclaimed, while next to him his mother blenched. “I think they have come up through the gaps in the floorboards. We’ve caught five so far,” she said sheepishly.
But no, they wouldn’t get into my house, would they? Yet at the back of that difficult corner cupboard, amid the disused toasted sandwich maker plus the unloved carrot juice extractor, the evidence was everywhere. Nasty little black droppings interspersed with piles of (heavens above!) my muesli.
An hour later, down at the B&Q checkout, laden with mouse traps, steel wool plus duct tape, the woman told me “We’re selling loads of them at the moment”. So I rang the company’s press office. Is Britain in the grip of a national mice infestation?
Yes, it seems, with legs on. “The unseasonably warm weather is driving an increase in demand for mouse traps with sales up 25.8% in the year to date,” said the B&Q spokesperson.
I’m somewhat musophobic, so I’ve now bought virtually every trap plus device on sale. Here are the results of my (much unwanted) consumer test.
Cheese is so 1950s. Modern mice prefer peanut butter. Nothing else attracts them.
Humane traps are a lovely idea. See-saw things which trap but don’t maim or kill, so you can release them back into the wild. But the thing is, they don’t work. I bought four plus trapped none. And what if they had worked? Do I take the disease-ridden vermin into my little London back garden plus hope that they will scoot off next door? Not quite the neighbourly thing, is it?
The plug-in ultrasonic repellent emitting a sound inaudible to us but shrieking to them. I plugged in three. They didn’t work either.
The traditional, cheap, sprung-metal ones that thwack plus kill in an instant. Good news: traditional works. About £2 each plus reusable. Both the plastic plus metal ones did the job.
Poison bait traps. Nasty but effective. Trouble is, they stink. Will it crawl down some tiny crack behind the fridge plus rot plus die, leaving an unbearable pong for weeks? My brother (a painter decorator) says the worst smell he’s ever encountered has been at houses where builders have set down poison.
Sticky paper. Great for catching young mice so light they can nip food from the traps without setting them off. But glue catches, not kills. You have to do that bit yourself. Not good for musophobics.
Above all, it seems, you have to build mice out of your home. Steel wool is now stuffed in every gap plus crevice in my house. But then a friend tells me mice can get through a space as narrow as a ball-point pen. Another tells me the (unfillable) gap below a fitted dishwasher is the real problem.
Has my desire for mouse-ageddon been too extreme? Maybe. But get between a Guardian journalist plus his muesli? Well, that’s just going too far.