No More Mice in My Drawers

That's right! No more mice in my office drawers. After the spider in the computer incident, I've been a bit jumpy in here.

The other day I discovered that the little rodenty pests had been in one of my desk drawers. Why that particular one and not all the others, I don't know.

Rambo and Dixi made a quick meal each of the two culprits and - to my horror - their offspring. Ugh!

So, today - Saturday morning - I decided to brave the violated drawer and tip everything out of it to inspect the damage.

I was lucky. There were a lot of photographs in that drawer, but the mice only chewed a few bits of paper and a couple of the outer covers of the photo envelopes. Whew! I'm sure glad my father's old war photos were untouched. Those are definitely not replaceable.

I vacuumed out the drawer and cleaned everything down. Then I brought out my master weapon of mouseproofness. Ye olde peppermint oil.

Mice hate peppermint oil. I don't know why. Perhaps it upsets their delicate noses or something. Whatever it does, it keeps them away and is harmless to everything else. Insects hate it too.

I wiped heaps of peppermint oil all over the wooden drawer and made sure it soaked in. Then I wiped all around the desk with it. My office now smells lovely.

The cats don't seem to mind the smell. At this moment, Dixi is sitting with her nose against Sprite's cage watching with a worrying degree of interest.

Remember little Sprite the sparrow I hand reared early this year? She's all grown up now and is a bright, cheerful member of our family. She's such a friendly little bird, it makes me wonder why people don't domesticate them and raise them as pets.

Don't get me wrong, I'd never take a bird from the wild and keep it in a cage. Sprite was just one of those accidents that occur once in a while. She was never meant to survive. But she did. And... like poor old Mintie before her, she's not a bit afraid of the cats!

That's all for now. I have to put the washing on the line, then it's back into The Shadow Runners.

See ya!