Mice in heat finding the weather hot stuff

OPINION: Summer has turned up the heat big-time and, like a delicate flower that thrives in dappled shade (ha ha), I'm wilting and looking distinctly shiny about the nose, writes Patricia Soper in this week's And Another Thing.

The problem is that I have to lie outrageously to those who adore temperatures in the high 20s. Who wants to be thought of as a summer-pooper?

There is another side to the heat – one that has been widely reported but, unless you are directly affected, is hard to comprehend. Mice. Lots of them. A plague of these cheeky rodents is creating all sorts of problems here in northern Southland. I blame the ripening grain coupled with high temperatures. It's a recipe for reproduction (the mice, not mine) and exasperation.

Let me say from the outset that I am not mouse-phobic. I wouldn't like them in my bed (although one was teetering on the curtain rail in my bedroom the other night), but I wouldn't leap on a table to escape their scrabbling ways. Indeed, there is something rather endearing about them, for which you can blame Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse is a personal favourite. How could you not love a mouse dressed in a blue skirt and pink blouse carrying a wicker basket?

I have been nipped by cornered mice and extracted many a half-dead specimen from our cat's jaws. He, of course, is living the life of Reilly, so much so that the cat flap has been locked to deter him from carting the damn things inside. One bring-in lived on cat crackers for several days until we finally trapped it.

The problem with mice is they take no time at all to reproduce. About 18-22 days is the average gestation period and, when breeding conditions are favourable, they go to town. A few years ago I saw the most amazing sight on my way home from Te Anau. A stream of mice ran across the road in front of my car. There were hundreds of them, risking life and limb. From memory, conditions were similar to those we are experiencing now.

There are a few coincidences in nature and, when it comes to the toss, mice don't care a lot where they bed down for the night. They make themselves at home anywhere that is warm, relatively secluded and close to a food source, which at the moment is pretty much everywhere. They have ruined my jam by nibbling through the cellophane seals, broken into bags of semolina and gnawed their way into packets of biscuits. Anything edible is fair game.

I haven't yet worked out why one such character took a liking to the curtain rail in my bedroom. Did it have lofty aspirations, or did the heat just get to me?

» Athol-based Patricia Soper is a food and feature writer, columnist and retired public speaker.

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