Three Blind Mice (Okay) Not Blind, but Three

I took pains to fill the bird feeder Saturday because I knew we were going to the coast early Sunday morning and would not be back until late Tuesday. We feed straight sunflower seeds which I keep in a garbage can that’s not quite waist high. It’s a plastic container with smooth sides and there are about eight inches of sunflower seeds in the bottom, plus an old pitcher and scoop I use to transfer the seeds into the bird feeder. There’s a lid and basically, it is in place.
The birds are hungry this time of year so yesterday I took the lid off the container to get a pitcher full of seeds and my scoop. But wait a minute! The sunflower seeds are waving like the ocean! On closer inspection I see two mice have invaded my storehouse. I quickly slide the lid back on, tight this time.

Now, what do I do? I don’t want mice in my garage. We’ve heard them in the wall earlier in the month. I set a trap to take care of the problem. A set some buckets on it and it went off. No problem, I thought. I can still see the cheese I was using for bait.

But now, I can’t reach in to get the sunflower seeds. If I do, surely they will climb on me, --maybe jump into my face. There was a time in my life when I snapped the heads off guarder snakes, drowned excess cats for Aunt Olga, chopped of chicken heads for the dinner table and killed rabbits for Aunt Connie‘s home butcher shop. But I don’t enjoy hands on killing.

How can I separate them from the seed? I‘m not going to try to grab them. That’s really hands on and I might actually be successful and then what would I do? Maybe I can make friends with a neighbor’s cat and she can solve the problem. Too complicated. It would harder to catch a cat than it would be the mice. And it would take to long. I can dump out the seeds and whack the mice with a shovel. But I would surely miss and they would escape into the recesses of the garage. I discard the idea of trying to stab them with a hay fork. Too hands on, and it would take too many tries. I can throw them and the seeds in the outside debris container and let the garbage man pick them up. That would take days and they might get out because the walls are all dirty.

I hit upon a solution. I will take the storage container down the hill and dump the seeds into a smaller container. On the way down, I realize, all I have to do is lay the container on its side and they will make a run for it.

And that is what I did. They scamper off up the hill into the ivy. I buy new traps and I’ve caught two since.

End of story? Not quite. Beside the two live mice there is a third dead mouse. Now, just how did he die? Did he eat himself to death? Was he the third man in a lover’s quarrel? Succumb through old age? Disease? I can’t help but wonder....