Sunday, April 10, 2016

There's Been a Breach

Sacks of duck feed are kept in the garage, inside a large plastic tub with a secure lid.  All winter long, the duck food has remained clean and dry and easy for the Duck Keeper to access. 

Then came Spring.



That there are mice in the garage is not news.  They've been leaving their droppings on the lid of the duck food container and lots of other places too.  For example, there are mice droppings intermingled with crumbs of soap surrounding a little plastic container holding a bar of soap.  (This soap is in the garage now.  In season, the soap sits beside a rain barrel so the Duck Keeper can wash her hands without having to go inside the house.)

The soap crumbs tell us that mice can get through plastic.  Still, they had not breached the tub holding the duck food.   That changed.  Perhaps energized by the Spring Equinox, they ramped up their efforts.




One day a hole was present in the side of the container.  Employing low tech ingenuity, the Duck Keeper stuffed a rag in the hole.






The rag held, but a second hole appeared.  The Duck Keeper stuffed an second rag in the second hole.







The Duck Keeper transferred the duck food into a metal container.  Will there be another breach?  Stay tuned.

4 comments:

  1. You may want to employ the services of a hit-cat.

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  2. Maybe at night fix up a nice kitty bed in there ? But I think the steel container just might work for the food. But a kitty keeps the mice away.
    Love your drawings ! Naughty mice.

    cheers, parsnip

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  3. William's right. Hire a hit-cat!

    Last year, I thought we had mice in our storeroom when I found some plastic shopping bags looking like confetti. But there were no dropping anywhere. After a thorough search, I found no trace of mice anywhere else in the storeroom.

    Turned out the bags were designed to disintegrate like that. Weird.

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