A mouse in the house!

Oh no, I think there's a mouse in the house! Now I'm not very clued up on the old vermon poo but I'm fairly convinced the little brown pellets in one of kitchen drawers is definitely excrement from our little furry friends. Just to make sure I thought I'd do a little google image search (as you do) and yup, these are what I found....thanks to the lovely images at all state animal control

The worst part of this is that initially I thought that Mr Blueswing had simply dropped some coffee granules into the drawer and so I picked one up to smell it *gags* 

Now there wasn't a great deal of them, maybe 20 at the most and since searching every cupboard and drawer I've only found approx 5 more. These were under the kitchen sink which is where I am assuming they have come in. 

Not really thinking too much about it I hoovered the little pellets, emptied the drawer and cleaned it with dettol. It is only since reading more that I think I've made a little boo boo.

Apparently the worst thing to do is sweep or vacuum as this spreads the dust particles thus scattering the germs everywhere. Also mice supposedly wee constantly so chances are wherever there is poo there'll be urine!!! Arggghhhh, this is getting bad. 

So what am supposed to do now:

1. Throw away everything that was in the drawer or disinfect it thoroughly. Thankfully it was the tin foil/cling film drawer so that's not the end of the world

2. Empty the hoover and disinfect throughout!

Disinfect the hoover!!! I'm lucky if I actually clean the filters once in a while!!!! 

I have since stumbled across a great blog entry that has made me feel better. Harry Stadler quite rightly pointed out in his Noticing animals blog that he's been living with a mouse in his house and he hasn't fallen ill yet. 

Although I'm not the greatest of cleaners, the kitchen is always thoroughly cleaned and disinfected so surely the risk of falling ill is minimal?! I hope!

I do remember having mice in the house as a child. We only realised when we found mice prints in the solidified lard in the frying pan (that does make me feel quite queasy just thinking about it) My brother and I used to set little traps for them and take them to the fields to 'free' them. We loved it!

I don't remember my Mum being overly concerned or even scrubbing anything down and there were definitely no nasty illnesses to report.

So, until I have another coffee granule/mice poo incident I'm going to try and relax and if that isn't possible then a midnight kitchen stake out might be in order!