The Mousecatcher

Mulak Reader - The Mousecatcher

Here’s a little essay about my relationship with mice. Sports Afield used it as their “Backcountry” feature in the August 1984 issue, and it also appeared in Brown Feathers, illustrated by the ink & graphite drawing I’ve titled Woodpile Axe.

THE MOUSECATCHER

"Poor, poor Danny Meadow Mouse!"

Thornton W. Burgess

          Like me, my dogs like mice. They seem to know I'm on my way to the woodpile as soon as I come out of the cellar, and race each other to the stack. There is no mistaking their excitement as the jockey for position, eyes and noses intent on the spaces between the logs as I fill the wood box. The mice that live there fascinate them.
          Some men have an ability to reduce the size of a stack of cordwood once it's split, but I don't have that puzzlemaker's knack—my woodpiles grow taller with splitting and restacking. The resulting abundance of spaces makes for a veritable tenement for mice, and as I load the wood box I inadvertently evict a mouse from his winter quarters.
          The apparent quickness mice have on a linoleum floor is an illusion of confined space: In the open yard they scamper, but are defeated by the distances involved. The setters hurtle the woodpile after the renegade, chase, pounce… but seldom actually catch the mouse. Each thinks the other has it under her paws. The little guy makes his escape, still scampering, often between the hind legs of his would-be captor. There are canine looks of disbelief when the mouse's absence is discovered, then the dogs do some scampering of their own. The show is far funnier than any mouse cartoon my children might watch on a Saturday morning.
          Mice have never received what could be called a "good press." Otherwise calm women scream in terror at their appearance. Farmers and storekeepers hate them. They are lumped in with lice, cockroaches, and rats under the label "vermin" (an evil-sounding word if ever there was one) and folks feel obliged to exterminate them. They are, after all, rodents (another evil-sounding word.) Society tends to judge animals by their worth to mankind, and mice rate a flat zero. There is, after all, no market for mouse pelts. There is no demand for them in epicurean restaurants. If you scratch hard enough, someone might mention that mice eat weed seeds, but other than that no one has a kind word for them.
          Me, I like mice. I've never had any quarrel with them. The handsome fellows that live out in the woodpile pretty much mind their own business, and the little guys in the marsh that scramble around my boots while I'm duck hunting keep me entertained. The best grouse dog that I ever owned would occasionally pause to point a mouse if she could see it. Exasperating as it could be, the experience would serve to remind me that hunting is not nearly so serious a business as I sometimes make it out to be.
          And what would writers of children's fiction and cartoonists do without mouse characters? Mighty Mouse. Speedy Gonzales. Jerry's Tom. Mickey himself. In a realm where mice sometimes chase cats and keep dogs for pets, only Thornton Burgess portrayed them accurately: constantly hunted by every form of predator both great and small, in a never-ending search for food, living anywhere and everywhere.
          It is this last ubiquitous quality that gets them into trouble, usually in the fall when the cold forces them to move indoors. Like weeds, no one pays them much attention until they appear where they are not wanted.
          I hear the garage door rumble downward, then my wife enters the house. She is talking before the door has closed behind her.
          "Steven, there's a mouse in the garage. I saw him in the headlights when I put the car away."
          I dodge. "What'd he look like?"
          "Like a mouse."
          "A small fellow? With white feet and a rather long tail?"
          "Don't be funny." She folds her arms and tries to look stern. "I'm not going out there again until you get rid of that mouse."
          I shrug.
          She plays her ace. "And the children aren't going out to empty the trash, either."
          Ouch. That leaves just me and the mouse as the only ones allowed in the garage. He has to go.
          Actually, I'd known all week we had a garage guest. The few sunflower seeds I had spilled while filling the bird feeder were mysteriously gone the following morning. At some time in the future, perhaps during spring cleaning, we'll move some forgotten item on the back shelf and find a nest of string and leaves and junk in which will be the hulls of the missing sunflower seeds.
          Evicting a mouse calls for action. Leaving a note won't help. ("Susan saw you last night. That wasn't too smart. You'd better pack-up and leave.") I once brought the dogs out there, hoping they'd sniff out the mouse and I could just shoo him out of the garage. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had baited several mousetraps with cream cheese. When I returned minutes later, my traps had caught a pair of English setters by the tongues.
          Those "catch-'em-alive" devices aren't much help. I once caught a mouse in one and brought it outside to release the little guy. He hit the ground and ran back into the garage. Next time, I brought the trap out near the woodpile before letting him out. Within two days we had a mouse in the garage again. I didn't check his uniform number, but I felt sure it was the same one. He knew the way. So I resort to real mousetraps.
          All-gray house mice are rare in the country. Mostly, I catch white-footed and deer mice (I confess to not being able to tell the difference) and an occasional vole. (Thornton Burgess's Danny the Meadow Mouse was actually a vole.) I bait traps with bacon or peanut butter or (My setters' favorite) cream cheese, but I am not an enthusiastic trapper of mice. Yet I swat flies and mosquitoes with a vengeance. I catch trout to eat. And I hunt, fairly and sportsmanlike, never pretending that bird shooting is any fun for the birds.
          Perhaps it is because I hunt that I regret the necessity of my mousetraps. The mouse in my garage is seeking simple survival, doing what is right in Nature's world. Emptying a trap into the trashcan I do not think of the fact that mice are, by design, at the low end of the food chain and a necessity for predators everywhere. Nor do I reflect on the fact that it is a lucky mouse who lives long enough to see his first birthday. No. Instead, I find myself wishing that I could be like my dogs: chase, pounce, but never quite make the kill.
          Maybe next year I will try leaving a note. I'll hang it on the barrel where I keep the sunflower seeds, but down low where they can see it. The print will be very tiny, but the message will be clear:
          "Be smart—Stay out in the woodpile!"

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This site was last updated 09/21/06