Of Mice and Moths

I’ve been having a hard time sleeping this summer at the cabin. Usually the darkness and quiet tend to lull me into a comforting state. But all night I hear the small crashes of moths as they fly into the nightlight and the windows. This is accompanied by the sounds of mice running around, scratching in the walls, rearranging plates in the kitchen sink, and small thuds of unknown origin. In the morning I find the wings of moths—in the bathroom, under the dining room table, behind the kitchen sink—but no bodies.  I have to assume the deer mice  are killing the moths and eating their bodies but leaving behind the papery wings for me to clean up.

All summer long, I’ve tried to end this carnage, not just because I want my precious sleep back, but I’m tired of having to clean up the mouse poop and moth wings. I’ve put out three different live mouse traps, but, so far, only one worked. After I caught the first two or three mice and marched them across the road to release them, I realized that it wouldn’t take long for them to come back to the plentiful feast in my cabin. The next one I drove across the creek, hoping it wouldn’t be able to cross the creek, but these animals are smart. Several times I put out live traps with peanut butter, only to find in the morning that the peanut butter was gone but so were the mice. (The one below is checking out the mouse trap.)

I’ve looked for cracks in the walls and floors where they might be entering from the crawl space below and stuffed them with a mouse deterrent —a cloth with a sharp citrus smell they presumably don’t like. But either their portals are somewhere else or they are stuffing the cloth back in after they let themselves in, because the cloths are undisturbed.

Nor do I know where the moths comes from, because I never see them during the day. At night, when I open the door to the supply room, dozens of moths suddenly are whirring around me. When I enter the bathroom, they are clinging to the wallpaper,  floating in the water in the sink or hurling themselves into the nightlight and the windows where moonlight floods in.

The worst night was in July when I thought I could safely sleep in the attic and not worry about mice jumping into the bed with me, which one did in the downstairs bedroom in June. But when I got into bed, I found mice poop; it was also in the base of the lamp. And soon I saw mice scurrying up the chimney from the kitchen below and chasing each other around the attic. On top of that, dozens of moths materialized out of the darkness, swarming the lights and me. Needless to say, I hardly slept that night.

I found out that it's not the lamps or heat that attract the moths but the moon that causes them to hurl themselves against the windows. Apparently, moths navigate by moonlight, and their frantic fluttering shows the need to follow their instincts. I wish I could release them from their torment, just like I want the mice to return to their natural habitat. Maybe the pandemic quarantine has made me more sympathetic to the moths’ frantic need to get out. Maybe we’re all beating our wings against the windows looking for light or a way out of this nightmare.

Comments

[Rachel Maizes]

Hi Kathy, Sorry about your struggles. If the moths are attracted to the moonlight, would some kind of exterior window covering deter them? Which might give the mice less incentive to hang around your cabin. I admire your cruelty-free approach to dealing with the mice. Wishing you luck that they find a new home.

[Kathy Kaiser]

Thanks, Rachel. I think the mice come in for anything and everything--food crumbs, warmth from the cold in the winter. I think the moths are a side benefit for them.
A friend suggested a noise-emitting machine that supposedly deters the mice. That might be my next step.