lfr, thank you so much. I laughed until I wept. I wanted to say something witty about adversity bringing out the best and/or most articulate in some people, but I'm laughing too hard, so someone else will have to do it.

Wow--that just kept getting better.

Many cats are really bad at catching mice. A big pile of poison and a bowl of water will do the trick.

I used to know some people who lived in a really dirty house that was full of mice. They went on holiday and asked us to check up on the place... we got there, and the place was overrun with rats. Not mice, BIG skanky rats. We put poison out, and because they had eaten everything else there they all flocked to it. There must have been 100 of the bastards. It was frightening, and I'm not easily spooked.

Anyway, my friends didn't believe us until they got back and saw all the dead rats.

(I forgot) We never could figure out why all the rats stayed hidden when they were around... but finally agreed that it was their dog. Are rats afraid of certain breeds of dogs?

Oh my god. That was excellent. I cracked up so much I woke my roommate up.

Ahem, not for the mousaphobic.

I love the fact that first they started off as a variety of tiny furry wildbeeste roaming the land to, suddenly, aliens watching their every move.

I will testify to the jumping ability of the animals. I managed once, surreptitiously, to capture the single mouse that had taken up residence in my flat just after I moved in. He was feasting in my rubbish bag. I was watching the telly, heard him, crept into the kitchen and quickly sealed the bag and hoisted it into the sink.

What now?

I slowly opened the bag.

It was there looking back at me and then

BAM! it leaped out the bag, over my shoulder and away under the fridge. I screamed like a steamtrain plunging into a tunnel. That mouse rued the day eventually tho. Once it had gone back undergroudn, my razorsharp beercan barricade prevented his reappearance. Thank God for beer.

Luckily, Chicken-Leg Al is a ferocious mouser. He even killed dozens of baby rats this spring (outside; fortunately I haven't had a rat problem in the cabin yet) and at least one vole. I've supplied Little Izzy Cross-Eyes with many mouse toys, including one on a wire I use to tire her out at night. It looks like the training's paying off: there was a small purple carrot that looked like a mouse in a pail of veg I'd brought in (it had some stems still on it), and she rooted it right out of there within minutes and killed it good all over the place. She will be feerce wit teh meeces, I think.