Dead mouse

I found Kepler playing with this pathetic little object.

Kepler's finding

It’s possible he killed it, but then he’s a great collector of found objects so it’s just as likely that he came across it already dead.

Anyway it’s one less to sleep inside the car engine and eat our hazelnuts.

There’s always something sad, though, about the shell where a life once was.

Computer down

My computer went down today, big time. There was no warning: suddenly the screen resized itself, all the shortcuts on the desktop disappeared, and the mouse opened things without them actually being open.

I’m writing this on Clive’s computer while he tries to recover my files. So far he seems to have got just about everything, except my email files aren’t readable.

He may be able to make the email readable but it’s by no means guaranteed.

Bummer.

Desk, pool, pellets, and Damaris up a ladder

This photo was on a flash key, taken by Clive using the mobile phone. It shows my desk, the indoor swimming pool (masquerading as a bookcase), plants, stacks of pellets, and a reclining Taylor. The sinister dark shape right at the back of the room on the right is me up a ladder cleaning mould from the ceiling where the outside wall is exposed to the brunt of the wind.

Nibbled walnuts

Today I found more evidence of the resident mice who built a nest in the air filter housing of our car – see Mouse on wheels.

Walnuts nibbled by mice

They’ve been biting great holes in the fallen walnuts and eating the kernels, sometimes leaving them completely hollow.

I’m getting an idea of their daily routine now.

They spend their days tucked up nice and cosy under the car bonnet or in the bubble wrap of the pool pump house then, at night, they sally forth and eat our walnuts. Or our hazelnuts (we never get any - they get them all), figs, apples, crocus bulbs …

We are a sort of grand mouse charity.

One found its way into the house, once.

We spent ages luring it into a humane trap, night after night, trying different locations and different baits, while it continued to use the back of the cupboards as a super-highway.

Eventually I heard the cage door snap shut and there it was inside, looking back at me. After leaving it a moment while I made preparations to take it right away from the house, I came back and it had gone. It had compressed its skeleton and slipped through the bars.

After that we got a traditional mouse trap which took one night to do the business.

Mice are fine so long as they don’t come into the house, or damage the car or the pool equipment. Other than that, I guess there’s room for everyone.

Mouse on wheels

Out shopping in Valtopina, one of the ‘vigili’ (town police) threatened to put a ticket on our parked car if we didn’t move it fractionally away from a junction. At the same time he pointed out that we were losing liquid – brake fluid, he said.

The bed under the bonnet

Back home, we confirmed that it was in fact washer fluid leaking from the jets in front of one of the headlamps.

Our handy friends went in behind the headlamp and discovered, in the air filter housing, a pile of small pieces of foam and plastic. These had obviously been scuffed up directly from there, and also brought in from various other places as evidenced by nibble marks.  It was a mouse’s nest.

So that was why the dogs had been sniffing under the front of the car!

Those little perisher mice must have felt safer there than in the weep holes of the wall which is where they normally hang out – assuming it’s all the same tribe.