Howdy, all. This past weekend I noticed something rather interesting, and I thought I would share it. Actually, it is part of something that started some time ago, so I will back up and give you the background. When we moved into our current house in the early 80s we had problems with mice coming in our house in the fall when the weather turned cold. At the time, we had 4 cats, but that did not seem to deter the mice. The worst part was that they would not stay in just the basement, but would invade the house proper. After several years, they seemed to stop invading us. From time to time I would see evidence of a mouse in the laundry room, but nowhere else. Then, last fall, it became evident we had mice in the laundry room. We dragged out the Hav-a-Heart traps, and in one 48 hour period, caught about 20 mice. We were suprised that there were so many, because we had not had them anywhere else in the house. I didn't think much about it though, until I read in an organic gardening pamphlet a suggestion for keeping moles and gophers out of a garden. The suggestion? - get some domestic ferret dung and turn it into the soil around the edges off the garden. This got me thinking - the laundry room is the only place in our house that the ferrets never go. Also, although I can't say for certain, it was around the time that we first got ferrets that the mice did not invade our whole house in the fall. Could there be some truth to this gardening suggestion? The most recent evidence came this weekend. I had noticed we had some rats in the yard, and while I wanted them gone, I couldn't decide on a way to get rid of them without also hurting the chipmunks and squirrels that I enjoy watching. On Sunday, my son was cleaning our ferret cages. We have cages with a wire bottom, and a pan underneath. As a result, sometimes the ferret poop gets stuck to the wire bottom. My son has found that the easiest way to clean the cages, therefore, is to take them outside and hose them down. After he had finished cleaning the cages, I happened to be out in the yard, and say a rat poke its head out from a hole under our sidewalk. It ducked back down, and so I stayed where I was, standing very still. After a few moments the head poked back up, watched me for a moment, and then came out of the hole with something in its mouth and ran around to the other side of the house. A few moments later, it came back, and repeated the proceedure. This time I was able to establish that the rat was a momma, and what she was carrying was babies. I watched as she moved 4 babies, and when she didn't return, I went over to explore the area she had left. What I found on the grass around the area was a lot of dried (but now partially rehydrated) ferret poop. Now, I realize this is not enough evidence to go marketing ferret poop as a rat and mouse deterant, but I was wondering if anyone else had experienced anything similar. BTW, my SO now insists that something must be done. Either I get larger Have-a-Hearts and get rid of the rats, or he is putting out rat poison. Danee DeVore [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 1653]