Suicidal Mice

It's that time of year when the nights draw in, the temperature plunges and the mice go on their annual house hunting spree looking for their winter digs. They are pretty fond of my house. This has a great deal to do with the fact that it is the only house for a long way, an even longer way when you consider the length of a mouse's leg. Autumn thereby seems them coming joyously into my kitchen, eating old candles, boxes of matches left in kitchen drawers and running along the larder shelves.

I normally resort to mousetraps in the battle to stop them squatting at my house. However, in a fit of irritation last year I resorted to buying poison for when the pesky rodents returned. I put the plastic container under the sink and never even opened it.

This morning I was rummaging through the hellhole that is the under sink cupboard when I noticed some small white plastic shavings. Darn it. Mice. They're back. Depressed I started looking to see exactly what they had started destroying. My hand fumbled across a container which I pulled into the light. Sure enough a neat line had been nibbled around the lid, the mouse version of a tin opener was in operation here. Then I looked at the label. MOUSE POISON. Apparently, I have suicidal mice. I'd forgotten I had the stuff and had never even put it out and they were literally chewing their way into the packet.

Is life so bad for mice today? Is the economic armageddon affecting them too? Mouse savings have gone up in smoke, tunnels are being repossessed and inflation has pushed cheese out of all but the richest mouse's reach? I didn't know. But judging by the state of the poison jar, things are bad out there......