Last night Sarah and I were talking to Waichi, our downstairs neighbor, about how we have Thumper for the week to help us to combat the wicked mouse population in the kitchen. Waichi was quite interested borrowing Thumper for 48 hours out of the week that we have her because Waichi's problem with mice appears to be more acute than ours. She actually caught 11 mice last year and had just had an incident where she believed that after capturing one dead on she vaccuumed blindly what may have looked like a mother mouse and then took the vaccuum cleaner bag outside. We weren't too keen on loaning out our loaner cat.

Waichi is a renter, not a condo owner, and she has had a long standing disagreement with the owner of the condo about the mouse population. The latest dead mouse that she had found put her over the edge for tolerance and she took digital photographs of the dead mouse and the mouse hole and sent them along with an email to the guy she rents the apartment from. The email basically said that she wouldn't pay the rent until someone came to plug the hole where the mice were streaming into the apartment because it had been open for months.

So today Waichi came back to our apartment to inform us that she had been given notice by her landlord to terminate her lease. The email with the picture of the dead mouse and refusal to pay rent landed her with a tenant at will end point. So Waichi may be moving out and it looks like the mice have managed to remove a fierce ally and opponent in the war against them with their persistence and vigor.

Go Thumper. Get the mice. Get them good. Make them stay away forever.

Unfortunately no mice have been harmed in our condo yet. Thumper spent her first day hiding under the bed and just this morning started to rub up against me and Sarah to provide us with her scent. The mice haven't left droppings since she came but that might because they are scared.