Can you believe...

...that yesterday was the shortest day? This year has flown by so quickly ~ Sam has already done one term at university and the first month of Beverly's au pair job seems to have been over in a flash! The photo above, by the way, was the sight that greeted us on Friday morning! The footprints in the snow are Amber's and you can see that the snow was quite deep. Poor Amber doesn't like the cold or the snow ~ I had to push her out the door Friday night to go for a wee before bedtime!


I confess that I still haven't got my Christmas puddings done yet!! I really will have to do them today or my sister won't be very happy with me on Friday when I turn up on her doorstep with no pudding for Christmas dinner LOL


I still have presents to wrap, too *sigh* I'm really behind this year ~ I think the "mouse situation" has taken up too much of my time and energy. Oh, didn't I mention the visitor/s we've had?? Yes indeedy, we've had a mouse-in-the-house! Daniel, my very nice pest control chap, doesn't think there have been many of the little blighters, judging by the amount of droppings ~ yuck! ~ but it's amazing how they get around the flippin house. We first noticed that they had been in the larder ~ they had chewed on a bar of cooking chocolate, a jelly and a couple of bags of oats! I took EVERYTHING out of the larder and ~ obviously ~ threw away the things that had been nibbled as well as open packets. Everything else was wiped over with a solution of Milton and stacked on the dining table...which I had, finally, just about got cleared up! Daniel put out lots of poison bait boxes: in the larder, in the cupboard under the sink, behind the washing machine, under the bath, in the airing cupboard, in the cupboard under the stairs and also in the dining room!!! Like I said, they do get around...


Still, it seems that they are taking the poison bait and thankfully we haven't noticed fresh droppings over the past week or so. Daniel phoned yesterday to see how things were and said that it's best to leave the bait boxes in place over Christmas; he will phone again after New Year's Day for an update and if there is still no further sign of activity, then he will come and collect the bait boxes.


Adrian and I set to and mouse-proofed the larder, so I was able to get everything put back in there. Adrian has also mouse-proofed the cupboard under the draining-board, which is where we keep our baking pans and plastic food storage boxes. We decided to leave the cupboard under the sink for now as we want to make sure the mice come for the poison bait. I do feel quite bad about poisoning them but there really isn't any other way to get rid of them from the house :-( Daniel told me that you could live in the cleanest, tidiest house in the world but if there is a way for mice to get in, then they will do so as it's so much warmer, obviously, than living outside. Cavity walls make great homes for mice ~ even if the cavity has been insulated, like our's has. Also, we humans may well find loft insulation horrible and itchy but it doesn't bother mice, who will quite happily make their nests in the stuff and if they can't find anything else they will, apparently, even eat soap!


Obviously, a human's home is rather like the land of milk and honey to mice!