My husband and I had the retirement dream to go live in the country, and at a young enough age that we could handle the physicality of it still. We moved to the Driftless area of Wisconsin in the fall of 2020 and we love it. However, while my husband grew up in a rural area, this has been my first experience with it.

It took some getting used to.

Most of my Driftless Thursday posts have been about cute birds and animals and the colors in the sky. These are all real and amazing things here, but every once and a while I’ll post about the challenges. It’s not all fawns and rainbows up here.

We’d been living in our house for only a week or so, and at night I swore I heard things. I suspected there were mice about but never actually saw one. I looked for droppings along the baseboards but found nothing. Still, I was sure there was something. My husband thought I was just getting used to living in the country. The nights can be so quiet that you can hear any little noise and your imagination can take off.

Fast forward a few days and it was time to do a load of laundry. The house came with a big unit, top-loading with a glass lid. I carried my laundry basket to the washer, loaded it up, turned it on and walked away. My husband asked me in the living room if there was room for a couple of his things. Sure, I said, toss them in.

Not thirty seconds later…

“Honey, there’s a mouse in the washer.”

“Ack!” I said. “There’s a dead mouse in the washer?”

“No, it’s very much alive. It’s sitting on top of the load, looking right at me.”

So I went and had a look. A little brown field mouse stood atop my clothes as the water slowly trickled in behind him. He had a look that was equal parts fear and wonder, as if contemplating what life choices he had made to reach this predicament.

My husband and I are both pretty squishy-hearted. I went searching for a container with a lid to scoop the mouse up but before I got back my husband had him in a plastic grocery bag. I ran ahead to get the front door open. The mouse scratched his way through the bag about halfway across the driveway and made a beeline for the grass.

Problem verified: We have mice.

The internet is an amazing thing when it comes to learning and I am ridiculously thorough when it comes to research. Soon enough I was armed with knowledge and tools. My multi-part mouse strategy:

1. Find the source. I patrolled the foundation of our home until I found a nickel-sized hole in the sealant where the lines from our outside A/C unit enter the house. I stuffed steel wool in as far as I could reach, then wrapped the lines in copper mesh right up against the house, held tightly in position with zip ties.
2. Eliminate potential nest areas near the house. Okay, it’s the country. But, some of the flashing around the foundation gaped with the house settling over time. I hammered it flat as best I could and used expanding foam sealant to fill in any remaining spots. I did this over a couple days, starting from one corner and working my way around, hoping any critters that had made a home had a chance to get out.
3. Go overboard inside. I mean, I’m all for live and let live but the idea of mice in my home makes my skin crawl. I crammed steel wool EVERYWHERE, especially in the corners of the garage and any spots where piping goes into walls.
4. The inside clean-up. Yeah, we did put traps out for anybody unlucky enough to still be inside. There were two.
5. CATS. We picked out two shelter cats, siblings about five months old.

Honestly, the boy could probably only catch a mouse if it ran into his mouth when he yawned, but the girl is a bona fide huntress. When we take Jenga outside, we bang on the door first and yell, “Attention, ground squirrels! This is a Jenga Warning! This is not a drill! Take shelter!” A few times we’ve still had to pry one out of her mouth (she’s never killed one, but I’ve no doubt she could if she wasn’t heavily supervised). Watching her hunt is amazing, as she doesn’t run after the critter, she runs where she predicts it will be. And she’s right a lot.

Over five years later, the cats have never had to catch anything inside. Retired engineer: 1. Nature: 0.

Also, she’s vicious-looking, don’t you think?