Mice!
We aren't sure how many there were, but over a period of a week or two, we first started to notice that we heard scuffling of tiny feet in the evening while watching a movie, then Anne noticed one scurry across the floor and into a hole between the floorboards. Then, a few days later, we noticed that the basket where we were keeping our dry goods had lots of crumbs beneath it. Closer examination revealed little holes that had been chewed in the plastic bags and resulted in us throwing away a bunch of food and enclosing the rest in a hard plastic tub. Doesn't look as nice, but at least things won't get eaten until we're ready to eat them ourselves!
Perhaps I should pause here and explain a little about our flat. It is a nice flat with pretty modern fixtures and features, and you can tell that it was renovated fairly recently. The floor is a real traditional hardwood floor, and by that, I mean that the floorboards are not always evenly cut or joined together, the nails often work themselves out and we have to go through with a hammer every ten days or so and nail down the ones that catch our socks. In a couple of places, there are small holes where the wood had a knot that was not filled in by the builder and you can see through to the foundation if you look through. Nothing we can do about it, but that's just how it is. So when I say that we hear mice sometimes, we're never sure if they (it?) is running across our floor or underneath, or in the neighbor's walls, or even in the flat above us.
Anyway, so we've set traps, but apparently these mice have that guy from Ratatouille or something telling them what is safe to eat and what isn't, because they have yet to take the bait. I called an exterminator service the other day and asked what their service involved. They use poisons and do a survey to tell you where the holes are that need to be filled, then give you an estimate on what it would cost to fill those holes. For that, they'll charge you 150 pounds plus tax. I chuckled when they said the part about filling the holes - since I don't need a professional opinion to tell me that a mouse has about a million options if he wants to enter our house. And the idea of leaving poisons around the house with small children is not exactly high on my list either.
So, rather than have an exterminator come out, we decided to try one more option first - you can buy a small device that you plug into your wall and that produces an inaudible ultrasonic pulse along with an electromagnetic pulse that runs through the walls of your house, that is supposed to be uncomfortable for rodent's hearing. They run 25 pounds a piece, so we got two for our small flat (one for each end of the house). So far, so good, though one of them does emit a small chirp from time to time, so I think it might be defective and we should take it back and get a replacement. No sight nor sound of mice since we plugged in.
I should also point out that when I was at the store looking for "a better mousetrap", there were three or four other people looking for the exact same thing at the same time. I made a comment to one of them that there must be something going on for us all to be looking for mouse traps at the same time and was told that yes, it is "that time of year". At least it was comforting to know that we hadn't been keeping our house so messy that we had attracted them in the first place!
Hopefully the last posting on this subject!
