A couple of days after I released one mouse into the back yard I saw 4 mice in the house!

We even managed to transfer one into the car via a shopping bag where it promptly munched its way through a chocolate bar that had been left on the back seat by one of the kids.

The cat quickly became bored with her new mouse friends and just left them to run around the house. Which they did. Then one evening when I was working late at the computer I heard a sound and turned around just in time to see 2 of the mice disappearing into the fireplace and up the chimney. The old chimney is their home and removing the old fire gave them a new back door to come out and play!

Once the last one had gone back up the chimney for the night, I blocked up their back door by leaning a particularly revolting picture against the fireplace. Now we get back to the dead flowers! The picture leaning against the fireplace is not a very good way of stopping my little mousey guests coming to call – in fact most of them can squeeze out from behind it without a problem, although there is one rather fat mouse that gets stuck. However, once a heavy vase of flowers is placed against the picture their back door is shut and they leave me (and the cat) in peace.

So you see the vase of dead flowers is nothing to do with me being a lazy housekeeper…it’s just my way of keeping unwanted guests out. But I will have to do something about getting the fireplace blocked up again properly – when I can be bothered to phone the builder.