So That's Where my Hazelnuts Went!


Winter's here in the Northwest. Mice come up the vents into our homes. Fun.I noticed a small hole in the bag of hazelnuts I eat when watching TV. Tossed the bag.
I've been hearing a mouse in the walls near my computer work station for a few days.Last night I turned off all the house lights to go to bed, and immediately heard it again.
Logic says the little bastard was probably in my work area, chewing on cables.As I got closer, you guessed it. He'd crawled into the back port of my KEF 150's.
I covered the port, took it to the garage, and caught the fat little guy in a live trap the next morning.Opened the speaker, OMG maybe 60 nuts, and some cat food. Not the first time this has happened.
128x1281111art
Another reason to avoid ports.

I lived in an old gatehouse built in 1888. No insulation in the walls. Chirp, chirp, getting fainter chirp right at ear level behind the sofa. Wife a real soft touch, me too I must admit.

Cut a hole, pulled out a baby bird. Up into the eaves, there’s a nest with other babies. Ok, put the baby in the nest.

Next day, a weak chirp chirp, in the next stud space, so I had to cut a second hole. Moved the nest away from the wall upstairs, put the scrawny looking thing back in.

3rd time, a different wall, nearer where I had moved the nest. I figured out, he was the weakling, mom knew he wasn’t gonna make it, and kept putting it out of the nest. I let it fade away.

Here, I get mice over the years, have 3 traps with notches for success, # 1 the true winner. I keep my birdseed in containers they can’t get in now.

Traded Bill for two Mitsubishi Vertical TT. I successfully built one. The other, mice ate a lot of the wires inside, it’s good for parts only.

My son had a rabbit loose in his room at college. Bunny didn’t like the music, he chewed thru the speaker wires.
What the heck is wrong with your cat? Not doing it's job! Doesn't like the sound of the KEFs?
Back in the early 80's while we were building our house we lived in a 50' mobile home.  I was trying to turn the dial on my Sansui 8080 and it was stuck.  I took the cover off and low & behold there was about a dozen pieces of dog food on top of the power supply blocking the tuner mechanism from moving.  I still have no idea how the little critter got those pieces in there.  We live in the high desert mountains north of LA and the rodents are super tenacious.  33 years later & I am still fighting the battle.  Fortunately, they stay out of the music room.
I had a pair of Infinity Cresado (SP). The guy gave then to me..

LOL HUGE Rat in all.. 14" head to tail..

I like passive radiators. Work better for me when it comes to bass. Everything else is a sealed box (IB) or OB with dipole planars. Metal grate both sides of the film.. Rats be aware... Zap...

Yea I used a live trap too.. She is called Bubs.. Parson/Jack Russel.

Best ratter and mouser I ever had.. I have fruit trees. OH yea.. Prune plumbs, apricots, grapes, kumquats, pecans and SS almonds.

I hate RATS, (both kinds), human and non human. No, I didn’t like the movie "Ben" either...

Regards
My cat recently died at 16. Now I know why he was so big and fat. Probably ate 3-4 mice per night.
Type in 'Random the spinner cat' on YouTube if you want to see howcool he was...
Growing up in our first house, we had mice. We’d be watching TV and would instinctively raise our feet when one passed by. Traps all over the place got them, but one had this knack for getting the bait and tripping the wire.

We’d hear this snap, and run to see if we got him. My dad called him half-away for uncanny ability to avoid his fate at the hands of that trap. On one occasion, he left part of his tail behind in the trap. Well, one day his luck ran out. End of story.

As for big rats, my mom told us stories of growing up on a farm with rats bigger than their house cats. One day while putting on some winter pants to go work in the field, she kicked a rat out of one of the legs. They’d go down in the cellar to get something and there was their cat, having a stare down with a rat bigger than he was. The cat never lost a fight. They also had a neighbor who took out a rat with her .410 as it crept up on her infant in their bassinet.

All the best,
Nonoise


@hvymec    Do you find much sonic difference between the SS almonds and tubed ones???
We have wood rats here.  They used to live, chew and defecate in the foam flotation areas of my aluminum jonboat stored outside and would chew the trailer wiring regularly requiring me to rewire the trailer.  Awful smell aboard and a PIA to rewire trailer. 

Solution is small bags made out of knotted panty hose with a few moth balls in each strategically placed in rungs of trailer.  Do it with my sailboat too.  Smells like hell but no problems in years.  An olde sailors trick moth balls, cheers.
@hvymec Do you find much sonic difference between the SS almonds and tubed ones??? LOL

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sweeter in this case.. SS = Soft Shell. Actually rare.. All of them were infected with a beetle.. I took cuttings,, before they pulled the ALL the orchards.. in the Valley..

I treated the cuts.. and I have 3 Soft Shell almond trees.. One at the house two in the delta.. Sturdy now... I did grafts on to hard shell trees, too.. It’s Fun.. The Organic Mechanic... YUP...

https://www.google.com/search?q=nutria&oq=nutria&aqs=chrome..69i57j46i433j0l4j0i10j0.7443j0j...

This is a big rat. Nutria.. New Orleans and around the glades..
HUGE... Gator and BIG snake bait..

I say we start eatin' um. Soak um' in somethin'... and COOK um...

Regards
I can’t really blame the little fellow. I like music.  I like honey roasted peanuts...

Man, imagine if you were just chilling in your living room, eating some snacks, listen’n to some tunes then BAM, someone locks you in your house all night only to then trap and kill you in the morning... 
@1111art I'm wondering how long you were trying to figure out what instrument it was you were hearing before you found the nuts! Just a faint wood percussion of some unknown origin! I checked out Random. Nice boy. I've got one like that who let's me continue to spin him rapidly like that and another whose fav game is to run and jump on a rolling computer desk chair and ride it like a mechanical bull.
Got married in 78 & lived in a run down house in the country. I was sitting in my recliner, eating popcorn, listening  to my AU 717 Sansui & SB-8000 Technics. My wife let out an OMG, I looked down & there was a rat sitting on his haunches, begging for popcorn. We both jumped up, scared the rat into a closet. The wife got our cat & threw it in with the rat. After what sounded like a Battle Royal we opened the door & out came a happy cat carrying the rat.
You guys are hilarious, keep them coming...
LIVE trap BTW, I have fields all around my house. The coyote's will have a 'field' day next spring. So far I've caught/leased 117 mice. Just walked 1/2 mile in 30 degrees at 5AM to let some go. Dedication. Trying to pay off some karma for hunting rabbits as a kid.
@oldhyvmec, state of Louisiana actually did try to market nutria rat as a consumable meat but it didn't get anywhere, truth be known though, if you have dined in some questionable food establishments in South Louisiana you probably had some. As a side note, I use to trap nutria rats for there hides every morning before school and remember vividly getting a live angry one in my pirogue with me, I got out swam to shore and retrieved my boat that afternoon.    I was 19 and living on the West bank in New Orleons, every night I would smoke a joint and leave the roach in an ashtray next to my real to real and it would disappear by the time I would go to retrieve it, had to move the R2R one day and found a pile of paper where the rat was dragging the joint and eating the good part, baited a rat trap with a fresh joint and got that bugga that night. Enjoy the music
One night my Labrador retriever and I opened the door to the second story deck to have a smoke.  Actually I was going to smoke Susie-Q the lab was going to bop down to the yard and engage in canine activities.  The instant the door was opened Susie-Q burst out in pursuit of an O'possum which had come onto the deck to steal dog food.  The frightened possum ran through the still open door and into the den where the stereo is located.  The possum was acting very strangely.  When I rapped it on the head with a yard stick it behaved very like an insane possum by hisssing and snapping at the yard stick.  Long story short Mr. possum ended up hiding in the bass horn of a Klipschorn.  I tried playing the conclusion of Saint-Saen's organ symphony very loudly.  No luck.  After trying several different bass heavy selections at outrageous volumes what finally did the trick was Herbie Hancock's Future Shock played at ear bleeding volume.  Once the possum emerged I used a leaf rake my wife had brought to me to sweep the possum out the door and onto the deck where he promptly jumped off the deck onto concrete twelve below. 
If you are ever selecting music to entertain O'possums it would probably be best to avoid Herbie Hancock.
I wonder about the efficacy in these situations of playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at a very high volume.  Perhaps the incumbent will come shooting out of the speaker...
Come to think of it I did have the Telarc 1812.  I should have thought of it.  If I ever suffer another audio/O'possum crisis I will keep that in mind.