Critters

This post started its life as "Dang Meeces". If you don't get the reference it goes back to Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks". Mr. Jinks the cat would pronounce "I hate meeces to pieces!" and so do I...

These are shooting patches, they're pieces of cloth you wrap around a lead ball before putting it down the barrel. They grip the ball and contact the rifling allowing the rifling to impart spin to the ball increasing its accuracy. These in particular are oiled, so they've been soaked in some kind of oil which both helps lubricate so they slide down the barrel better and softens the black powder fouling so it doesn't make loading difficult. The mice apparently like the oil so they eat into the package. They don't eat the cloth, they just steal the patches and hide them somewhere where they presumably lick the oil off. I've got other patches that are lubed with some kind of grease, they'll steal those too but seem to like the oiled ones better.

The white in this picture is styrofoam, the grey in the middle is lead, this is a box of bullets which are also lubricated, probably with bees wax. The mice ate through the styrofoam presumably to get at the wax although they don't seem to have eaten it...

This is my cleaning kit, right in the middle is a tube of "TC Bore Butter", they claim its a mix of bees wax, wintergreen and olive oil. The mice appear to really like this, they've eaten the end off the tube and if you look close they've nibbled the grease.

Every fall we have mice coming in out of the cold, this year it seemed to happen all at once. When I noticed the stuff above I put out some new Decon and a bunch of snap traps. After a month I realized none of the decon had been eaten and none of the traps snapped, well thats weird.
The one day Angie and I were sitting around the wood stove when she says "Whats that?" I looked around and didn't see anything, she says "It was a little white weasel." yeah right, she's imagining things. We looked around some more and she claimed to see it again, I never did see it. So the next day she went out and got a "Hav-a-heart" trap, put it in the basement baited with a chicken wing from the Chinese restaurant. For 2 days nothing happened, then one night we came home from game night to this:

This guy is a Stoat, an Ermine or a weasel, take your pick. He made the weirdest noises, little purrs and chirps. He also stank. Think of a skunk smell at 10% mixed with armpit sweat at 120%. I wrapped the trap in an old towel (that got thrown away), tossed it in the back of the truck (it stank way too bad to come inside) and we drove him out by an old junk yard where we let him go. Probably there are plenty of mice in the old junk cars for him to eat.
On the one hand I'm pretty sure he was keeping our mouse population under control, on the other hand he smelled terrible and I'm pretty sure he's the one that ate the bore butter. I'm not sure what I'll do if he comes back, it could be an interesting game to keep trapping him, alternately I like not having mice but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know what his poo looks like. He's little but his poo must be much bigger than mouse poo...