Oh, HELL No...!

It is a time of War. A few days ago, while I was trying to figure out why my In-Progress 1972 Honda CB350 Four build was going off the rails, I ran across THIS:

This is probably self-explanatory, but for those of you who might not know, this ball of fluff here is a mouse nest I found in my tool chest. Uh-uh; Nope; No Sirree...! We ain't having THIS!  And God knows what and where this little devil got his 'bedding' from, but that partially explains why my Q-tip supply keeps dwindling. Mice seem to have a 'thing' for Q-tips, I don't know why...some of it is Q-tips, some of it is...I don't know what, especially that blue stuff...one of my towels, maybe?? And some of it looks like chewed-up seat padding, or exactly what I don't know; but I'm sure I'll discover its source in the garage some day!

I have nothing against mice themselves; sure, they're cute, but are absolute tiny little terrorists when it comes to having them roaming unchecked in my garage. They chew on wiring, make nests inside of motorcycle mufflers, nibble holes in cloths and seat pads, steal all my Q-tips, shit everywhere and are a pain in the ass in general, especially when they die somewhere in the garage in some unseen dark corner and the only thing that tips you off is the smell and buzzing of flies that you know are somewhere converting meat into mush and you can't find it, not to mention being a vector of disease. Several times I've found the mummified carcasses of these little bastards where they met their end in some forgotten corner of the shop long after the smell had gone away, usually reduced to just a puff of ancient hair and a few bones, their featherlight remains swept into a dustpan and disposed of outdoors in some nearby woods. Unfortunately, their ubiquitous presence in my garage has to be controlled, so that's what I do:  

I almost put a chalk outline around this one...

These are just THREE images taken at the scene in the aftermath of their inquiries of the peanut butter on the trigger of those traps, but they don't tell the whole story...

This is not the only tally-board I have...

Yes, I'm keeping score. Tallied after about a year or so, each one of those hash marks is a mouse that made a Bad Decision - except for the red ones. I used to use some red-and-gray plastic snap-traps that were easier to load and arm, but they didn't really work a lot of the time. Those red marks were the times I used them and found the mouse still alive in the trap! 

I may be a lot of things, but I'm not cruel; I didn't then stomp them to death or otherwise kill them, I'm a softie like that; I figured that those mice that did survive had been through enough trauma already and learned their lesson in the garage - "Nope! I'm not going back in THERE again!" - so what I did was put on some heavy gloves and take them, trap and all, out to the woods about fifty yards away and release them. Those were the lucky ones...the black hash marks, Not So Much. Those are the victims of the Victor and TomCat snap traps seen in the above photos. I prefer them because they kill pretty much instantaneously. 

Believe it or not, one day I actually saw a black snake (or rat snake, as their known down here) slither into the garage; it somehow got in through the garage side-door. I startled it when I entered and it slithered off to somewhere in the garage. It didn't really freak me out - I like snakes, and rat snakes are harmless and tend to eat - well, 'rats'! Or mice, in this case, so I left him alone in hopes he would do his snaky thing in there. I was more worried that he wouldn't be able to find his way back out! I never saw him again, and nothing smelled afterwards, so I hope he found a snack or two.