I
Walking home today I saw something brownish greyish lying on the sidewalk. Obviously a mouse, dead and probably quite young. A little jarring but I didn't think that much more of it. Until I was about a block from my house and saw another mouse. Also dead, a little bigger.
Which made me start to think. Was it the same cat? And if so, was the cat working in some kind of pattern?
II
Tonight I had a housefly buzzing around my apartment. Not really a big deal, until it started crawling on my laptop. Swatted it away, but it returned a few minutes later. Annoying. Be more like the spider that will eventually eat you. Work under my radar. So this second time I caught it with an empty yogurt tin and an envelope and did a catch/release out to the hallway. Why not outside? Because hindsight is 20/20.
2 comments:
Poor little mice. You're probably right that a cat was involved, maybe a bored one who lost interest once its original victim stopped moving. Cats hardly ever eat mice as they tend to prefer the treats people feed them.
This is definitely the time of year when the insects of summer get old and confused. Usually houseflies are very difficult to catch seeming to have eyes in the backs of their heads - actually they do have pretty good visual range. He probably didn't care where he went after you caught him and put him out the door. Perhaps he found another keyboard next door.
Speaking of spiders, I noticed a medium sized one in the bathtub a few days ago. He (or she) was having no luck climbing up the sheer porcelain at the tap end of the tub, although he/she did freeze when it noticed me looking. So I began brushing my teeth keeping an offhand watch over its progress. Once it had decided I wasn't likely to rinse it down the drain he/she walked to the other end of the tub, climbed up the slope and was headed up the back wall before I left the room. I figure house spiders do a good job keeping down the real pests - like flies.
Mice--and for that matter rats--only appear as nuisances to us because they get loose in our homes. If we only saw them in the wild or as pets we'd like them a lot more. Also reminds me that Peter has a cat laying dead mice around his house, which weirds him out.
Compound eyes are well evolved for some creatures. If we had them it might just leave us confused. Yeah, that fly will probably just head to somewhere with warmth and the promise of food, although my neighbors won't be any more welcoming.
It's quite true that it can be handy to have a spider in your home to cut down on other creepy crawly things. The only downside is that some species might bite you as well. You know if you wake up with itchy red welts. But again, on balance most are pretty good. I'm not likely to kill one if I find it. Sometimes I've liberated them outside, other times just gone about my buesiness.
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