May E.B. Forgive Us

I knew that the white-footed deer mouse is one of three common small rodents of the Maine islands, along with its close cousins, the meadow vole and the red backed vole, both of which look rather mouse like, but have quite different ecological “niches.” This is a fancy way of saying they divide up resources- feeding territories, living space and schedules in ways that minimize competition between them.  All very civilized and Darwin-like. Meadow voles are generally dark brown-gray in coloration and eat leaves and stems of grasses and other herbs, while its red-backed first cousin restricts itself to forest habitats and reproduces more slowly. In the time that it takes a red backed vole to produce 25 offspring, a meadow vole, which can produce six to eight young every two weeks will have 233 children.  The deer mouse is just as prolific, but primarily forages on seeds and fruits and thus needs a larger “home area” to survive.

The most famous white-footed deer mouse of all time was not an environmental hero, but a literary one; his name was Stuart Little, and he alone is probably more responsible for the proliferation of the deer mouse throughout rural America than any other individual of his billions of relatives. What hard-hearted human could possibly want to trap one of these big-eyed, long tailed, surfboard-riding adventurers who leapt directly out of the imagination of Maine’s greatest literary stylist? (Stay tuned). 

Elwyn Brooks White, Stuart Little’s creative grandfather undoubtedly first met some of Stuart’s relatives in a drafty Maine farmhouse, way down the Brooklin peninsula near Naskeag Point, where he wrote rather than farm.  Summers in Maine are great for us all, including deer mice. They preside over elaborate island picnics featuring large fruit baskets spilling over with raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries, and rose hips. As the autumn sun turns island fields brown and tawny and ripe seed capsules litter the ground so abundantly that they cannot all be carried away by the most diligent field mouse, you begin to discover little caches that have been stowed away for a lovely Thanksgiving feast. But then one day in December, it is all over. Unless you hitchhike out of town with your tongue-depressor board over your shoulder looking for the perfect wave, it is time to look for a more secure shelter.

The first sign that you are under siege in the old island farmhouse are the furtive shadows you catch out of the corner of your eye, often when you get up for that midnight visit to the loo, or otherwise disrupt the busy nocturnal schedule of these prolific rodents who are mating like crazy during the day while we are out and about. Once we were at dinner late and a deer mouse had apparently not noticed that the kitchen light socket had been temporarily removed to attend to the wiring and fell out of the ceiling into a bowl of pasta. Talk about dying and going to heaven.

We bar the cupboards before decamping ourselves for the final time in December, but unfailingly when we return, there is always a bar of soap that has been gnawed to oblivion (for the fat) or piles of insulation in the corners of drawers where mouse nests have been constructed. Believe it or not, brillo pads are a favorite construction material. (Hint: scented Fabreeze dryer squares in your drawers discourage rodent nesting). One winter I remember being confused as to how quickly the dog was going through a 50 pound bag of dog food in the corner of the kitchen until I opened the bottom drawer of my desk upstairs and found it chock full of dog pellets.

All this is well and good in an old summerhouse-how can you complain when you yourself do not have the courage to wait it out during the long dark days ahead? But living on the mainland, it is a different thing altogether. It’s not their foraging for food that you begrudge, but the first skitterings in the wall that soon turn into relentless gnawing, while you realize that 233 of its offspring will be born inside the walls before the winter is out. Whatever little holes in the foundation that might have been excavated by the deer mice, are easily widened by chipmunks that are bold, bold, bold once the white-footeds have left the door ajar. And if you live out in the country with a barn nearby, well, the relatives of Ratty-not the kindly ones from Wind in the Willows-but the really awful tribes of their uncouth barbarian hordes will try to slink in.

One poor fellow I met my first winter in Maine was so rattled by the relentless incursion of rats from the barn that he rigged up a light in the corner of his bedroom backed by thick mattresses and slept with a 22 pistol to wreak his revenge. (He left Maine before the rodents did).

We drew the line when we noticed a leak in the kitchen ceiling over the upstairs bathroom and called in the carpenter to find the source of the leak. After saws-alling a hole in the sheetrock, our carpenter discovered a large mouse nest that had produced so many mewling youngsters who had peed their bed that our ceiling leaked.

That was the last straw; we reluctantly went to war. May E.B. forgive us.

Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.