Monkey

The enemy attempted to re-open their thoroughfare to their occupied territory, but I caught them quickly and have sealed it beyond their means to re-open it again. I relocated five of their agents this morning and I expect to capture many more tomorrow morning.

This morning I found, for the second time, a trap with no agent, but with signs of an agent having been within the trap. I have decommissioned the trap in question, as one possibility is that the trap is simply faulty. The other possibility is that, for the first time, I have encountered an agent that is much more sophisticated than the others. He is undoubtedly at least a colonel in their army, but despite his relatively superior intellect he seems unable to free his captured comrades. We’ll see how smart he really is once he is alone without minions to do his bidding…

All of the downspouts around my house feed into 4″ PCV pipe that runs around the outside of the house, and takes all the water out to a holding pond out in the woods with the runoff from the driveway as well. Recently I’d noticed a lot of water in my crawl space, along the side of the house with the covered porch. Given where the house is, and the fact that the entire side of the house is protected by the porch, I started to suspect the downspouts. I figured that maybe a line was plugged and one was perhaps overflowing. So I decided to test them by running water down there and seeing what happened. What I ultimately found was very disturbing…

After running hundreds of gallons of water down all of my downspouts, I could only see water reaching the single exit point from only one of them. Yup… one out of 5, and it was the one closest to the exit. I could not see where the water that I put in all the others (a whole lot of water!) had gone. We uncovered the pipe all around the house, except under the covered porch, and saw no breaks in the line. So, I got under the porch and uncovered the line there.I found two breaks in the line, right above where the water was seeping into the crawlspace. Worse, it is apparent that these breaks have been there since the house was built. One of them was on the side of the pipe, and was just covered over with dirt. The other was broken around most of the pipe, and whoever did it simply cut a two foot section of extra pipe lengthwise and placed them around the break and covered it over with dirt. No glue. The pictures tell the story. Water from most of my roof never made it past these two breaks, and it all went down into the foundation, for years. Luckily, it seems that there wasn’t much erosion. The foundation drain must be doing a good job.

I cut out the bad section of pipe, and replaced it this evening with new. Water placed in the furthest drains reaches the exit perfectly now, and I am very happy!

It had been a while since I conducted offensive operations within Mouse Army occupied territory. Realizing that released agents could return so quickly, I reasoned that there was no point in capturing any more until I could make a change that would affect their operations. I would lull them into a false sense of security while I devised my next move. I inspected the border from their territory many times, venturing deep into their darkness only to return frustrated. I tried to see the world from their perspective; to “be the mouse”, but I was unsuccessful. I trapped and released their agents for sport at one point, just to keep them on their toes and to show them that, eventually, they would fall to my superior abilities. But still I could find neither their headquarters, nor their preferred roads to and from it. And after eight days, I still had no idea how they were breaching the border… until yesterday…

War with the Mouse Army revealed to me a serious problem with my house that needed attention. A great deal of water was reaching Mouse Army occupied territory during moderate rain storms. In order to investigate fully (which I did, of course, and found the issue) I was also able to inspect the full perimeter from the outside for the first time. Access to the Northern and Western borders from the outside is extremely difficult, and I had not attempted to do so until forced by the issue with the water. My penetration deep under these borders revealed a subterranean means of ingress that I had previously thought impossible from observations from within their territory. I sealed it immediately.

I now believe victory is at hand. Trapping will resume, and I believe I will quickly reduce and eventually eliminate their ranks and reclaim the territory that they have occupied for so long now.

This morning I recovered five captured enemy agents from two traps near The Hatch. I was able to tag four of them with a new marking agent before setting them free beyond the Western Border. I left two traps in their territory during the day and into the evening. By nightfall I had captured three more agents, and the marking was successful. Two of the agents captured this evening were set free this morning, indicating that there is still a breach in the borders of Mouse Army occupied territory.

While the new marking agent was successful, I won’t be employing it again. It is a water soluble glue based material, with colored glitter in it. It is marketed as safe for children, so I believed it would be reasonable to apply to my enemies, and it was indeed easy to apply. I could clearly see red glitter on the backs of the captives this evening. Unfortunately, it is very, very sticky and dries fairly hard in their fur. In their efforts to remove the telltale signs from each other they ended up removing a great deal of their hair. This doesn’t seem especially fair, so I’ll search for an alternate marking method.

This morning I recovered three captured enemy agents from the trap I placed just below the hatch into their territory. I also left four alternate enticement devices near the trap when I placed it, and they had been removed. This is good… while the enemy has the ability to move and consume most of these devices, they have no ability to conceal the results of doing so. I will therefore be able to track them to their favored nesting locations by finding discarded casings.

Since my failure to tag an agent on Day 17 I have been waiting to capture more and try again. This time I had three opportunities. My experience with the ghetto trap on Day 24 told me that I had a way to contain them outside of the normal snares. I transferred the prisoners to the alternate containment unit, but allowed one to escape in the process due to a clumsy but easily corrected mistake on my part. Next, I attempted to retrieve one of them by hand, but I did not have a firm grip on the agent and he easily escaped my grasp. Two down. I tried an alternate approach with the third agent, and found that my planned marking method was ineffective. I switched to an alternative and successfully marked the tail of the third agent, and release him. I will now look for the third agent to determine if there is still entry to their territory from the outside world.