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Genius critter or human sabotage? Perplexing finding!
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edy:
I can confirm that indeed a mouse was involved, and yes Canadian mice do love peanut butter. I still have to locate the point of entry and I'm not sure if it was a lone actor or if there is a whole cast. As far as the "hording" behaviour, I can only guess that this mouse came down into the basement but had no way up or out through the original opening (it's a subground basement). Perhaps it figured it would make permanent home there and started staking out a high-rise residence (my dresser drawer) as a place to nest. Why did it bother to move practically an entire bag of corn chips and spaghetti into it? Maybe it saw the opportunity to hide as much food as possible in there while it could, to save for later? If it lived outside the house it would have perhaps moved food outside.

I'm still digging through my electronics containers to see if I can find more corn chips and spaghetti. I have a dog but the basement is unfinished and until I declutter and start throwing away most stuff (which the mouse has finally given me a big incentive to do) I don't want him down there. That also rules out cats as a pest control option. I'll stick to peanut butter as it seems it works well. I had 2 gerbils as pets a few years ago and still have their tank habitat and gear but my wife doesn't want me to keep our new houseguest(s) for pets.  :-DD
Kjelt:
A mouse or a rat?
jmelson:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on December 14, 2020, 06:40:00 pm ---A mouse or a rat?

--- End quote ---
Yeah, I was wondering, that sounds like pack rat behavior.  Well, they would need a much bigger hole to get in.  While chewed wiring causing fires is a concern, THOSE guys will chew right THROUGH #12 wire!  (That would be a de-energized circuit, of course.)

Jon
fourtytwo42:
Many years ago I found a cache of peanuts in the bottom of an upstairs built in wardrobe, the nuts still had the skins on and the only place they could have come from was a sack in the garage kept for bird food BUT the garage had no door into the house. Eventually I realised they were getting in through a gap where a hole had been drilled through a wall to take a gas pipe (3/4") from the meter in the garage to the boiler in the house, the hole was only slightly larger than the pipe but enough for a peanut! Of course the peanut bag had a hole in the back too :D clever little buggers. Cemented up the hole, no more problems.
edy:
It is definitely closer to the size of a mouse, not a rat... although it could also be a "vole". The differences can be slight but voles have little cone-shaped snouts and tiny beady little black eyes, smaller ears and shorter tails as compared to mice. Adding to the confusion is that voles are also called "field mice" or "meadow mice".

I looked up "mouse food cache" and did find evidence that sometimes they will also store food, like squirrels. It's the only explanation for the photos I showed previously, since only something of that size could possibly have climbed into the drawer and created the little caches of food (although I am still shocked that it could have carried so many thin fragile strands of spaghetti into such tight spaces and lined them up... that's just unbelievable).

The question remains, are they able to get in and out of the house or is it a one-way trap where they walk through a hole in the brick wall and fall in (I'm suspecting where the mains conduit for the meters, breaker panel and coax cable/phone service enter into the basement). Perhaps the mouse could climb up the wall and get back out through the same hole. I have to investigate further.
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