Monkey

Today I am declaring total victory in my war with the Mouse Army. There has been no activity in the territory that they once occupied for quite some time now. Overall, I captured and released more than 50 agents, though some were, of course, repeat captures. This will be my final communication on this matter.

Here is a glossary of terms that I used in my previous posts on the topic, for those that might have been wondering:

• The Mouse Army – the group of deer mice living under my house and populating the woods around us by the hundreds
• The Frontier – the walls between my shop and the crawl space under my house
• My Territory – initially, just my shop
• Enemy Controlled Territory – the entire crawlspace under my house
• Operative – a Deer Mouse
• Eastern Border – the back of my house, which faces east
• Hidden passage across The Frontier – a small hold under the bottom of the furnace in the shop
• Counter offensive into enemy land – me crawling around the crawl space under my house
• The Spider Coalition – the rather large group of spiders living in the crawl space
• Outpost – a clump of fiberglass insulation that the mice build little nests out of
• Great Stuff – Great Stuff spray foam, the hard kind
• Western Border – the front of our house
• Alternative enticement devices – peanuts
• First marking method – spray paint
• Second marking method – glitter glue pen for kids
• The Hatch – the hatch down into the crawl space
• Subterranean means of ingress – a hole that the mice dug along the foundation down to a drain pipe that went through the foundation wall

It would seem that so far I am victorious in this war. My entire territory has been free of enemy agents since Day 42. I will continue to monitor my territory, but less frequently.

Overall, in 50 days I have gone from zero control over my territory with enemy agents living comfortably right under my nose, to ruling a realm that is devoid of their kind, with only a single death, and a only modest investment in traps and my own time.

I quickly captured and removed all agents from Mouse Army occupied territory, except for their colonel. He continued to enter and leave my traps with impunity, and eventually I found only evidence of his movement, and no other agents. On Day 42 I surprised him by switching to a new kind of trap that he had never encountered, and therefore had not learned to escape. Within an hour of placing the trap I had him.

I have annexed their territory to my own now. It is no longer Mouse Army occupied. I will continue to monitor the full extent of my territory for invading enemy agents with alternate enticement devices to ensure it remains under my control. If there is no activity for the next many days, I will declare victory in this war.

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…

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.