I have to tell you, my last article was back at Christmas and… I missed you! It’s been a month since I last wrote an article—not a real break because I’ve been working on lots of other projects, but still, I missed writing. Did you miss me? I hope so, otherwise my ego will take a hit!
So for this big comeback, I had a choice: talk to you about the upcoming seedlings, the seed catalogs piling up on my desk, or… make a nice, embarrassing confession. Guess what I chose?
This year, I have a mouse problem. And not just one or two stray mice. No, no. We’re talking about a “situation.”
The reality of country life
Okay, let me give you some context. I live in the countryside, next to the forest. It’s beautiful, it’s quiet, it’s a lazy gardener’s paradise… and it’s also an animal kingdom. Usually, I have one or two mice per winter that get lost in our house, we catch them, end of story. Nothing to panic about.
Except this year? One or two PER WEEK.
Yes, yes, you read that right. Every week, new mice. I was starting to wonder if I had accidentally opened an Airbnb for rodents!
Before you think I live in a rat-infested slum, let me explain something: when you live surrounded by nature like I do, it’s NORMAL to have mice around. In Montreal, where I grew up? Never saw a mouse in the house. But here, with the forest just a stone’s throw away, it’s a different story.
Mice need hiding places to live: piles of rocks, tall grass, quiet corners. I have plenty of all that around my house. It’s perfect for them! They spend the winter there, nice and cozy, and normally, only one or two happen to find the little hole that leads to my house.
The key word here is “small hole.” Did you know that a mouse can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter? That’s tiny! It really doesn’t take much for them to get in.
So having a few mice every winter is to be expected. But having one every week? That was clearly a problem.
The investigation begins
If I was catching so many, it must have been because the entry hole was particularly inviting. Like a luxury mouse highway, with “Welcome to Audrey’s” written in neon lights all around.
So I went around the house with my partner. We inspected, we searched, we played detective… And we finally found THE problematic ventilation outlet under the porch. Paradoxically, this air outlet isn’t even used!
When we removed the small plastic cap (which was supposed to be there to prevent precisely this kind of situation), we had our revelation. Over time, whatever was blocking the edge of the ventilation duct must have deteriorated. The result? A HUGE hole. Not just a quarter of an inch wide. A highway to my kitchen. Mouse Boulevard. The Rodent Expressway. You get the picture.
I was so shocked that I forgot to take a picture and just plugged the whole thing up!
The ridiculously simple solution
To solve my problem, all I needed was steel wool. That’s it. A whopping $10 at the hardware store.
Mice can’t gnaw through it or dislodge it with their teeth. We stuffed the hole with it, and since then, no more mice have gotten in. We had really found THE entry point, and a simple physical barrier was enough to solve the problem. We also put some in the heat pump, where starlings usually nest in the spring: we’ll see how that goes!
No need for complicated products, no need to exterminate the entire local population (okay, I admit I had a brief moment of “oops, I’m emptying my forest of mice,” but in the end, everything worked out). The mice simply went back to living outside, where they are very happy.
Yes, but… what about the garden?
Okay, you’re going to say to me, “Audrey, your mouse story is all well and good, but we’re here to talk about gardening!”
Don’t worry: I’ll be seeing my mice again this summer in my vegetable garden. But this time, they’ll be welcome. Well, “welcome” is a big word… Let’s just say I’ll tolerate their presence as long as they don’t eat all my lettuce seedlings.
Because yes, mice in the garden in summer are normal and not even that harmful. They’re part of the ecosystem, they have a role to play in aerating the soil and cleaning up a bit. In winter, life goes on for them too—not all animals hibernate in Canada—and we just have to make sure they stay outside rather than moving into our homes.
The moral of the story: make the outside of your home inviting so that rodents stay there… but still keep some steel wool on hand, just in case!
In any case, I’m really happy to be back on the blog! What would you like me to talk about in the coming weeks? I’m open to suggestions!
It’s great to see you back! I definitely noticed the gap and was excited when this popped up in my feed again: blog rhythms are funny like that, where you miss the writing and the readers at the same time. Your mouse resurgence story got me thinking about how nature always finds its balance, even if it surprises us. I remember troubleshooting a backyard sensor once and ended up calling the Humminbird customer service number just to figure out why the readings kept jumping, and it reminded me how even tech has its comeback moments too. Keep writing — your voice brings the garden to life for all of us!
We plugged all the holes we could find in our old house and still the mice got in. Finally, we dug around the entire house about 1 foot down and 1 foot across and filled the trench with sharp stone. Phew! It was a lot of work but no more mice. Thank goodness! They’re cute but they’re filthy and they carry hantavirus. We knew someone who died from it after cleaning out an old shed.
A word of warning: Wear disposable gloves and a mask whenever cleaning up rodent droppings, and spray a fine mist of water over droppings to prevent dust becoming airborne during sweeping and cleaning. It’s breathing in Hantavirus (and who knows what else), that causes the disease to take hold in our bodies.
Lots of mice in our old farmhouse here in the Townships. The worst was when they got into and built nests in the engines of both of our cars. It smelled disgusting, of urine and feces. It took my dear husband several days to take apart the engines to get to the nests. Now we tuck stinky lavender dryer sheets into car and rider mower engines, which mice apparently dislike, and it seems to be working.
Welcome back! Always learn lots from your articles!
I also live in the country and we have mice coming in downstairs. Well, what can we expect when there are bags of black sunflower seeds for the bird feeder just waiting for them?! I used steel wool on the openings under the sink and we no longer get any upstairs. But I can sometimes hear them in the walls. We need to become detectives too!
Sorry but I was chuckling as you were describing your mouse infiltration. We had mice in our kitchen last summer. Still no idea how they got in but we had to tear the kitchen and our pantry apart to clean up their mess. They love to spend the winter in our garage (where two cats also live). The two species seem to have come to some sort of detent and tolerate each other. Enter my husband the ‘great white mouse hunter’. He has an ongoing competition with the youngest cat as to who catches the most mice. We live in the country too so they are always present just not welcome indoors. Do you ever get porcupines? Another ‘problem’ for our trees in the country.
Enjoyed the article!
Yes you were missed. We once had a rat infestation. It was horrible.