Ebony's Pearls

Today is a much slower day. I discovered that field mice found my stash of T-shirts, so I've had to launder all of them. Once they are dry and cool, they go back in the box, but this time, I will put the lid on the box.

One of the problems with living near a large empty field and a park where half of it is left "wild" is that we get a lot of stray critters coming in - foxes, opossums, badgers, field mice, squirrels, moles, voles, birds of every kind (ducks, geese, pigeons, dove, redbirds, bluejays, blue birds, swallowtails, hawks, terns, seagulls, swallows, grackles, blackbirds, crows, ravens mockingbirds, cardinals, woodpeckers...), weird bugs, snakes, raccoons, muskrats (there's a large fishing pond at the park), field bunnies, and more. They try to get under the house, so all the under house vents are screened and wired. They try to get into the attic through the side louvers and eave vents, so all of those have to be screened and wired. And the mice get in no matter what. When they brush-hog the park and field, we'll always get an influx of mice. When the weather turns cold, we get an influx of mice. When the weather is wet for too long, we get mice. If it get really hot and dry for too long, we get mice.

They never stay long. Between the ferret, the dogs, and the cats, most of them die, and the rest abandon the house. But mice have short memories, and the next weather change brings a new round of mice.

I've learned to store boxed food in tight-sealing bins and glass jars because the mice will find it before the cats, dogs, and ferret find the mice.

Our dressers and drawers are set up so there's no open access to them so I haven't had any issues with mice in any of the drawers.

Why I never thought to seal the box the T-shirts were in is beyond me. When I took the sweatshirts and sweaters out of the box and put the T-shirts in, I should have put the lid on automatically, but I didn't. And then I set it on the floor of the closet and forgot about it until I laundered the NaNoWriMo T-shorts and wanted to put them in the box until next year and saw mouse droppings among the T-shirts.

We're currently in a mouse-free period, so those droppings were left very soon after I traded the clothes out.

So, I'm laundering all the T-shirts months earlier than usual and I sterilized the box I store them in.

I went through the room looking for other mouse damage and haven't found any, so I decided I might as well sort through all the paperwork that builds up if you don't stay on top of it on a daily basis. I also have boxes of paperwork from Mother's estate - old photos that never made it into an album, bank statements going back 50 years, canceled checks from all that time, bills and receipts, shopping lists, catalogs from stores that no longer exist, and letters she received from friends and family.

I know where I get my paper obsession, yes, I do.

Except, unlike Mother, I am willing to sit down periodically and throw away papers I no longer need.

So, that's what I'm doing today - washing mouse-dirtied clothes and sorting through ancient papers.