Nontraditional Peace Offerings

It is still winter...

...and Sarah,  James, and I are not the only living things in Faith House.  We also share space with assorted bugs and spiders, the occasional mold/dust creatures that seem dangerously close to evolving, and mice.  This post is for the mice.

We have tried many tactics to discourage our mouse neighbors.  Last year we borrowed MJ, our director's cat, and we also fostered cats multiple times throughout the year.  This seemed to work fairly well.  This year, we have borrowed MJ again, tried various sorts of mouse traps to little success, and started scolding the mice when we see their droppings or hear their scratchings (or in some cases, see their menacing mouse faces as they leap at you from the cupboard in the kitchen).

Then one day we were gifted a large, slightly stale breakfast danish.  This danish sat on our counter in a ziploc bag as we pondered where we would have space to put it, and quickly we noticed that other claims to the danish were being made as there were nibbles in the corners of the plastic.  These nibbles gave way to holes large enough for a mouse to pass through, and conspicuously new chunks missing from the danish each morning.  Instead of tossing the danish, as we have sadly done with other food the mice have eaten their way through storage containers to defile, we decided to leave it as a peace offering - and see what happened.

For the whole duration of that danish's dwindling presence, the mice and their "presents" stayed pretty much in one location - near that danish.  No more rampant mouse droppings and pasta half-eaten in the box!  The peace offering had been accepted.  We were beginning to live in harmony with our mouse neighbors.  Then came the fateful day when that danish was completely devoured.  It took us a while to buy a replacement peace offering, but this past weekend, danish #2 has been added back to the original spot in the original plastic bag, holes and all left intact for convenience.

We currently await the mouse response...

Note the chewed holes for entry in the upper left and lower right