Domestic Mysteries

[flemmings]

How do mice get up onto kitchen tables?

No, seriously. I assumed they were jumping from the chair seats piled high with books etc-- though there's the question, how did they get up the chair legs to the seats in the first place? But I've pushed all the chairs back. Mice would have to do a death-defying leap, diagonally upwards across about fourteen inches. So what? Do they swarm up the lamp cord? Wriggle up the table legs and use heel grips for the overhang of the table top? Parachute?

Because every morning there's a tiny turd waiting for me on the table, outside the tip-trap full of tasty flaxseeds the mouse is too dumb to go into. Rot it.

Comments

[joasakura.livejournal.com]

they just climb up the legs. their feet are so tiny, they find footholds in a surface that may seem otherwise smooth to you :)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

OK. But if the chairs are pushed back they have to climb the table legs, and the legs are set a good three inches away from the edge of the table. Somehow they're managing that underhang as well. Unless they can climb upside down? Or *are* going up the lamp cord.

[chomiji]

The cord is a good bet. You could try making a baffle (like people used on bird feeder poles to keep squirrels out) of cardboard to tape to it.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ahh. Interesting. I'll try that, thanks, and hope their tiny feet don't stick to cardboard either. Of course then they'll go onto the kitchen counters and stove, when what I *want* is for them to go into the traps.

(Which raises the question of why they go onto the table in the first place. There's never any food on it, or indeed anywhere near it. Mice r dum.)