Trapline update

As I mentioned yesterday, we seem to have been invaded by mice, or at least one mouse.

For the first several hours after the invasion had been observed the mouse could be heard gnawing at something in the wall behind the kitchen sink.



Neil first obtained a few glue traps from building management and then purchased several more traditional traps himself. The two types of traps arranged in with each created quite a visual. We were really trying to use the trapline approach to catching the mouse, it didn't have to be tricked into setting off the trap, it just had to try to leave to cupboard to set off the traps.



By the late evening the noise had ceased though none of the traps showed signs of mouse traffic. I hope that this means that the mouse has passed on (though the implication would be that it died in the wall). My theory was bolstered by some information that I received from the superintendent this evening. It seems that when they remodeled the building a few years ago they, as a precautionary measure, put poison between all of the walls. I suspect that the mouse may have consumed some of this poison and passed away.



The concern now is that if the mouse did die in the wall what are the chances that its decomposing corpse will stink up the joint? I don't think this is all that likely, though the superintendent was of the opinion that it was relatively likely.

A mouse in the house

Several minutes ago I returned from a brief shopping excursion to find that Neil had discovered a mouse in our apartment. By the time I had returned from the store Rebecca had sequestered herself in one of the bedrooms and Neil and the superintendent's husband had laid several traps.

In the minutes after my return Neil and I were able to listen to the mouse gnawing away at something. We both suspect that the mouse somehow made it into the wall behind the kitchen cabinets and now doesn't know how to get out.

As I write this Neil is buying several more mouse traps. The plan is to surround the possible escape paths so that the mouse isn't able to make from the cabinet area alive. Hopefully the mouse decides to try and head out the way he went in so that our plan will work. If the mouse is successful with his gnawing mission we may have a reduced sense of possible escape paths.

Some of you may be wondering how we happened to get a mouse in our apartment. While we don't know exactly what happened, there is a suspicion that it came in through the front door when some new tenants were moving in on the weekend. I am quite please that the superintendent hasn't accused me of bringing it with me in my boxes, a accusation that was leveled at Nithum and I last year.

Hopefully the situation will be resolved quickly, particularly as this gnawing is quite loud and distracting.

A Few Quick Notes 119

-The weather continues to be incredible in Montreal. We are experiencing what must be unseasonably high temperatures with clear skies and little wind. For the most part, if I could request a particular type of weather it would be like this.

-Yesterday marked the beginning of another two-day stretch of work. Fortunately, because of an Oktoberfest themed night, I was able to wear shorts to work (though it also meant that I got to wear knee-high wool socks). Actually, for the following two Thursdays I will also be able to wear shorts to work.

-No serious mouse action in recent days, though all of the traps seem to have been sprung (presumably because of furniture re-arrangement). Hopefully we haven’t missed any of the vermin because of this weakening of defenses.

-Last weekend I attended an antiquarian book fair in Montreal. Amazingly, there wasn’t really anything that I was all that interested in buying. I guess I feel that my 2003 edition of Sherlock Holmes will satisfy my needs just as much or more than the $3500 first edition.

-In the past few days I have finally started to ride my bike again, and it has been great. I am not sure why I continually forget how much I enjoy riding my bike.

-Yesterday I sent a package to a friend in St. John’s. Unfortunately, the shipping cost was about twice as much as what I had originally paid for the item that was being shipped. Now that I know how much it costs to ship parcels I will have to be more careful about such things in the future.

A Few Quick Notes 118

-Today was a remarkably warm day.  At one point I heard that the temperature was being reported as 29, though I find that hard to believe.  Also remarkable was that the sun quickly gave way to showers which then gave way to gray skies.  I guess that having only one or two rainfalls in a month is not actually all that good. Presumably there will be more rain in the coming days
 
-With the addition of traditional spring loaded traps to the arsenal we have managed to catch our third mouse.  This mouse, caught after only one night with the new equipment, was a fair bit larger than the second mouse.  Though this may be the last mouse, we have replaced the used trap and will continue to keep monitoring the trap lines until we go some number of weeks without a confirmed sighting or other evidence of mouse related activity.
 
-After a several week absence I am back at work on a controlled vocabulary side-project that I have been working on for the past several months. The original goal was to create a vocabulary of 2000 terms, something that seemed easy at the time. It still seemed easy after an early flurry of activity. Unfortunately, after about 1300 terms it no longer seems as easy. To be fair, with a little bit of effort and organization it shouldn't be all that hard to flesh things out and add a few thousand more terms without really stretching myself too much. Adding fewer than 20 new terms a day is just laziness on my part (something which I have plenty of).

-On Wednesday I have to hand in a project, most of which was done some number of days ago. The part of the project that was holding me up was the one page write up. For hours I stared at a computer screen, edited and re-edited, and wrote and re-wrote. Finally I have something that covers most of what I want to say, but still manages to be less than perfect. I guess I am out of practice when it comes to writing papers.

-After almost a month I finally unpacked my final two boxes this evening. Sadly, the motivation was create a space for my hand-truck, which I was tired of seeing in the front entrance. At the moment, my new 10 kg bag of flour is resting on the 'bed' of truck, ready for a quick evacuation.c

A Few Quick Notes 116

-Aside from a brief period of showers today was a pretty nice day. One possible flaw might be that even though the sun has set the temperature has not really dropped all that much. This trend is somewhat problematic when it comes to sleeping, or attempting to sleep.

-For the past two nights I have worked until close. While neither of the nights was problematic it certainly was tiresome. These long shifts were not made any easier by the fact that I have been suffering from a cold for the past number of days. Hopefully my Sunday afternoon shift will involve fewer keg changes than the last two.

Actually, that is the other thing that has been impressive my last two shifts. I am not sure if I have ever changed as many kegs. At one point on Thursday four went almost simultaneously. On top of that two sets of lines were not working properly and required continued attention.

-The mouse problem seems to be expanding, or at the very least continuing. While in bed after work on Thursday movement caught my eye. It turned out that one of the mice was on my bedroom floor near my closet. Shortly after its movement caught my eye it ran back into the closet.

Though I didn’t really want to do much about the mouse at 3:30 AM it seemed a pretty opportune moment, mainly as I knew exactly where the mouse was. Within a few moments I had re-arranged the contents of the closet to form a barrier, inside of which I hoped to trap the mouse. Though once the barrier was constructed I could not find the mouse. I quickly realized that the only place it could be hiding was the poison box in the closet.

With a curtain rod I tapped the box to limited effect. Confident that the mouse had to be inside I tapped again, this time more vigorously. After the second round of tapping I managed to get the mouse to leave the box and enter the open space of the enclosure. The mouse went from the box to the bedroom door, which it then managed to scurry under, meaning that to continue my hunt I would have to rummage around Nithum’s bedroom with him asleep at 3:30 in the morning. At that point I decided that the hunt was up for the night, I had failed.

Since then all that has happened on the mouse front is that I have been unable to get the motivation to go to the store and buy some wire traps for the creation of my trap line. Maybe I will get around to this on Monday (as the store where I was planning on making my purchase is closed on Sundays).

-While at Lobos yesterday I bought a few hard peaches as well as a pair of hard plums. As far as I am aware, these, aside from lemons, are my first fruit purchases of the academic year.

Actually, that is not the case. I just realized that I have purchased (during a sale) several bags of frozen raspberries.

-While listening to Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap tonight I was again reminded of a question that has been bothering me for some time. The question is whether or not Canadian Content rules apply to Mr. Bachman, and if not why? It seems that other shows could not play almost exclusively foreign music, particularly American music, and get away with it. Does his playlist mean that the rest of CBC Radio One’s content has to balance his high level of foreign content?

-For the first time today I saw an entire football game in person. The infamous McGill Redmen played the Acadia Axemen. In the final minute of play McGill managed to score to take the lead and then allow Acadia to score a field goal for the win.

The final score of 45-44 is somewhat indicative of the quality of defense. It seemed that both teams were more interested in offense.

Something else that was striking was the size of the players. Some of them were tiny and none of them were huge. I feel that if I stood next to the McGill football team I wouldn’t look particularly less athletic than most of the members of the team (though this may be a slight exaggeration).

A Few Quick Notes 114

-Today appears to be another beautiful day in Montreal. The only downside seems to be that the expected high will be approaching 26, which is a little warmer than I am interested in experiencing at this time of year.

-It seems that the Canadian dollar is now within 1 cent of the U.S. dollar. What seems striking about this is that none of my increased purchasing power has become apparent. In particular, I still seem to be paying more for books. A book I purchased a few days ago is $5.00 more in Canada than in the U.S. One would think that these differences would be a thing of the past. I guess vendors are taking advantage of our historical willingness to pay more than people in the U.S.

-Our mouse saga seems to be ongoing. While we have caught two, I have seen at least one more. I also worry that I have heard a fourth.

-Today is another day of back-to-back three hour classes. From 1:30-4:30 I have cataloging and then from 5:30-8:30 I have archives. Hopefully I won’t forget to pack a meal to consume between classes.

A Few Quick Notes 113

-While today has been generally overcast it is still quite pleasant. There is a slight breeze and the temperature is warm enough that one does not need a shirt, but not hot enough that breaking into a sweat is not an immediate problem. As long as the grey skies don't turn into rain I will be satisfied.

-While leaving the library today a friend and I saw several stacks of chairs near the free book box. As I have associated this location with free goods my immediate thought was free chairs. As we approached the stacks a sign was located that suggested that the chairs were in fact free and that people were encouraged to take as many as they wanted. Because of weight restrictions I was only able to take three, one less than I would have liked.

The chairs are not the most stylish chairs but their wooden frames seem sturdy, if old, and the red vinyl covering undamaged.

-With one of the new chairs in the living room it seemed the right time to assemble a $10 shelving unit that I purchased last Friday at Canadian Tire. Hopefully we will be able to place such things as plants and games on this shelf in the living room. While we have a few games we will have to get cracking on the plants front.

-Shortly after we moved in to our new apartment I noticed a mouse. That same night of the first sighting there were two other sightings. While we were not able to determine whether it was one mouse in three places or three mice we did go to the building manager to inform them of the problem. After several days an exterminator visited and laid a few traps.

After several days with no activity I was beginning to believe that the mouse or mice may have moved on to greener pastures (namely, the other apartments on our floor). This, it turned out, was not the case. Several nights ago I was awoken by the what I presume was at least one of the mice.

The next day I decided to place near the sight of the disturbance one of the inhumane glue traps left behind by the exterminator. As I did not want to have my pillow fall into the trap I pulled my pad into the centre of the floor. After several hours there was no change in the situation and I presumed that it would be quite similar when I returned from work.

Amazingly, one of the first things that I noticed upon my return from work was that the trap was no longer where I left it. My first thought was that it had been dragged somewhere, maybe my bed, by the mouse. After a relatively thorough examination of the area I determined that this was not the case and that the trap had been removed.

Shortly after waking up this morning Nithum was able to confirm that the trap had been removed. Apparently at about 10:00 or 11:00 last night he heard some noises coming from my room. Upon closer inspection they found the mouse in the trap. He and a friend then released the mouse in a neighbouring parking lot (apparently cooking oil does the trick).

Unfortunately I think that this may not be the end of our problems. While looking at some of the other traps I noticed that some of the poison in the living room was disturbed. Hopefully over the next several days we will learn that that was the only mouse and that we are living in a vermin free environment.

-Last night was another busy night at Thomson House. Hopefully tonight will be the same way. The only problem that I have noticed with working both Thursday and Friday is that I am quite physically exhausted by Saturday. Hopefully within a few weeks I will have managed to build up a level of tolerance that I don't yet have.