Genius critter or human sabotage? Perplexing finding!

[edy]

My wife was in the basement recently (where we have a pantry/shelf with some food storage) and noticed a bag of corn chips completely empty...  a small hole in the corner of the bag with rough edges. So I went down there and moved all the food, found 2 other items with similar marks. A bag of spaghetti with a small hole chewed in the corner and some missing spaghetti strands, and a bag of mini Mars chocolate bars with 1 package having a hole in the wrapper and the bar completely gone (yet all 10 other bars intact). ONLY these 3 items were touched.

I moved all the food to a safer location and noticed tiny black smaller-than-rice grain (what I assume to be) droppings on the shelf where the food was chewed and another spot on the floor a distance away. Ok, so I assumed a tiny mouse got in there (first time ever in 10+ years in this house) and checked everywhere but couldn't find any sign of any other issues... at least That's what I thought!!!!!   

It just happened I needed to change a lightbulb a day after and went to my drawer unit where I store various electronics supplies, wires, gear, etc. (See attached photos). I opened up the drawers one by one and noticed either collections of corn chips or complete stacks of spaghetti!!!! 

I even opened up my toolbag with electric sander, drill and Dremel and other hardware tools, lifted up my sander and underneath were piles of spaghetti!! (See last 2 photos). This didn't make any sense! My drawers were sealed fairly well, no signs of any damage, 2 drawers had no food in them. The hardware bag had food stuff UNDER an electric sander. The drawer and toolbag were at least 20 feet away from the food pantry where I noticed the hole in the bags of corn chips and spaghetti.

I cannot comprehend how and why a mouse would move that much food without damaging or leaving a trail of it into my toolbag UNDER a sander (that they could in no way lift) or carry up to drawers and deposit practically unbroken large pieces in there. It makes no sense!!! This has to be the work of human sabotage or someone sending me a message to clean up the basement. I'd hate to think it is someone in the family or a housekeeper losing their marbles but what the hey?!!! 

I've set up a bunch of mousetraps meanwhile but I'd like to know if anyone has ever seen something like this before and how it could possibly happen? I assume mice can be crafty and try to stash food away but seriously? This is just too perfect to believe.

(Note: my photos failed security check, maybe they had gps info, I'll upload again and update the message in a few minutes)

[DrG]

Everything you are describing is classic small rodent behavior. I would even speculate that the lack of droppings around some of the caches (as far as I can see on the pics) might suggest that it is more recent occurrence. I would not conclude a single rodent. If the droppings were larger (and shiny objects were missing also), I would say that there are weasels around (e.g., ferrets) as they do that stuff for S & G.

Suspecting a human would be low on my list.

IR trail cameras (if sensitive enough) or some simple traps might be a bit more definitive for identifying the culprits..

[Bud]

Have you found the Mars chocolate bar? 

[Gyro]

An small and extremely selective poltergeist? 

[CJay]

Get yourself a UV Blacklight if you haven't already got one, rodent urine glows.

[jmelson]

Get yourself a UV Blacklight if you haven't already got one, rodent urine glows.

And also smells!
You need to get the Victor traps with the metal trigger that is a curled-up "claw".  Shove a bit of peanut into the claw and then smear peanut butter around the claw.  The mice can lick the peanut butter off the trigger without setting the trap off, but then they CAN'T leave that chunk of peanut behind, and WHAM!  No more mouse.  The Victor traps with the yellow plastic trigger don't work as well.

We have been trying to find out how the mice get in our house for 20 YEARS, and have sealed up all sorts of tiny gaps in walls and basement, but they STILL get in.

Jon

[Larryc001]

When we first moved to our new home the local mice thought they had found heaven. We had them everywhere.  Slowly I was able to trap some that had been left inside when the house was being built. But they continued to get in. I found one spot where they were getting in from the attic was down the side of the vent pipe for the range hood. The space they were getting through was about 1/8 inch wide! Little buggers. But the way there were getting into the house from outside was underneath the vinyl siding. Blocking installed along the bottom of the siding seems to have stopped this. But any loose and accessible food such as cereal, bird seed etc. and they start coming in. Traps with peanut butter seems to get them regularly. I used some sticky flypaper traps but stopped because I thought they were inhumane.

It’s important not to have any food in the house where it can attract mice. Food needs to be put in sealed containers and not left in the original packages. I had a 30kg bag of sunflower seeds in the basement for bird feed and one day found it mostly eaten and hulls scattered everywhere. I caught the mouse that did this that night with a trap. I moved the bird feed outside into plastic garage cans. Then a possum chewed through the lid!

So good luck and don’t be surprised by them getting into the most unbelievable places. Once they start coming in it is hard to get them stopped. They can have a litter in 3 hours or some bloody thing it seems haha.

[DrG]

This is why God created cats (and those badass rat-terriers (Jack Russels?). Alternatively, catch a couple and implant tiny cameras and gps devices...get to the bottom of it before your house gets on the international rodent list of preferred eateries.

[edy]

It's unbelievable how I found a large round tin in one of my drawers, full of coax cable wrapped in loops for storage. And right smack dab in the middle underneath the whole bundle of cables is a collection of corn chips!!! How did these buggers manage to move so many corn chips intact into the least accessible of places and why? And same goes for spaghetti... practically unbroken long pieces. How could it possibly navigate through the tiniest cracks with such long intact pieces?

And I managed to find a trap today with a piece of bait missing and the trap not even triggered!!!  Cheap dollar store traps. Tomorrow I'm going to get myself some quality Victor traps and bait it a small suggested above.

Meanwhile this is a sign to unclutter the basement and yes we moved all the food into storage bins and put them in shelves. I may even start trapping them outside the house just in case. We are having a very mild winter here in Toronto so I wonder if that's contributing to it as well.

[DrG]

They can be pretty impressive....



....people, not so much.

[Kjelt]

Perhaps canadian mice are different from ours but when I was a child I unfortunately had a lot of mice experiences. Yes they are extremely smart , I have witnessed a mouse slamming a trap with the flip of his tail and then running of with the bait. But I never saw food stashes. AFAIK they eat where they find it and take as much as they need that day. At least I never found food stashes and we had a lot of mice.
The little black droppings are your evidence there is some animal active. With stashes here I would look for squirrels but have no idea what kind of rodents animals you have over there. Perhaps chipmunk or other rodent ?
Goid luck and try to find the nest.
Traps can be effective but if you have no pets I would go for the poisoned rice with cast that dries them out, very effective.

[Ed.Kloonk]

It's unbelievable how I found a large round tin in one of my drawers, full of coax cable wrapped in loops for storage. And right smack dab in the middle underneath the whole bundle of cables is a collection of corn chips!!! How did these buggers manage to move so many corn chips intact into the least accessible of places and why? And same goes for spaghetti... practically unbroken long pieces. How could it possibly navigate through the tiniest cracks with such long intact pieces?

And I managed to find a trap today with a piece of bait missing and the trap not even triggered!!!  Cheap dollar store traps. Tomorrow I'm going to get myself some quality Victor traps and bait it a small suggested above.

Meanwhile this is a sign to unclutter the basement and yes we moved all the food into storage bins and put them in shelves. I may even start trapping them outside the house just in case. We are having a very mild winter here in Toronto so I wonder if that's contributing to it as well.

Get rid of the little bugger cos they will chew on your wires (the insulation) to sharpen their teeth. Stick a camera in there to find where they are getting in. And yes, as DrG says, get a cat. Or as my friend calls them, a ball-bearing mouse trap.

[Ed.Kloonk]

[uski]

I can confirm from experience than peanut butter works wonder to attract Canadian rodents

Also :

[Kjelt]

Or as my friend calls them, a ball-bearing mouse trap.

If you don't remove the balls within 6 months you will get a very smelly house and garden.

[edy]

I can confirm that indeed a mouse was involved, and yes Canadian mice do love peanut butter. I still have to locate the point of entry and I'm not sure if it was a lone actor or if there is a whole cast. As far as the "hording" behaviour, I can only guess that this mouse came down into the basement but had no way up or out through the original opening (it's a subground basement). Perhaps it figured it would make permanent home there and started staking out a high-rise residence (my dresser drawer) as a place to nest. Why did it bother to move practically an entire bag of corn chips and spaghetti into it? Maybe it saw the opportunity to hide as much food as possible in there while it could, to save for later? If it lived outside the house it would have perhaps moved food outside.

I'm still digging through my electronics containers to see if I can find more corn chips and spaghetti. I have a dog but the basement is unfinished and until I declutter and start throwing away most stuff (which the mouse has finally given me a big incentive to do) I don't want him down there. That also rules out cats as a pest control option. I'll stick to peanut butter as it seems it works well. I had 2 gerbils as pets a few years ago and still have their tank habitat and gear but my wife doesn't want me to keep our new houseguest(s) for pets. 

[Kjelt]

A mouse or a rat?

[jmelson]

A mouse or a rat?

Yeah, I was wondering, that sounds like pack rat behavior.  Well, they would need a much bigger hole to get in.  While chewed wiring causing fires is a concern, THOSE guys will chew right THROUGH #12 wire!  (That would be a de-energized circuit, of course.)

Jon

[fourtytwo42]

Many years ago I found a cache of peanuts in the bottom of an upstairs built in wardrobe, the nuts still had the skins on and the only place they could have come from was a sack in the garage kept for bird food BUT the garage had no door into the house. Eventually I realised they were getting in through a gap where a hole had been drilled through a wall to take a gas pipe (3/4") from the meter in the garage to the boiler in the house, the hole was only slightly larger than the pipe but enough for a peanut! Of course the peanut bag had a hole in the back too clever little buggers. Cemented up the hole, no more problems.

[edy]

It is definitely closer to the size of a mouse, not a rat... although it could also be a "vole". The differences can be slight but voles have little cone-shaped snouts and tiny beady little black eyes, smaller ears and shorter tails as compared to mice. Adding to the confusion is that voles are also called "field mice" or "meadow mice".

I looked up "mouse food cache" and did find evidence that sometimes they will also store food, like squirrels. It's the only explanation for the photos I showed previously, since only something of that size could possibly have climbed into the drawer and created the little caches of food (although I am still shocked that it could have carried so many thin fragile strands of spaghetti into such tight spaces and lined them up... that's just unbelievable).

The question remains, are they able to get in and out of the house or is it a one-way trap where they walk through a hole in the brick wall and fall in (I'm suspecting where the mains conduit for the meters, breaker panel and coax cable/phone service enter into the basement). Perhaps the mouse could climb up the wall and get back out through the same hole. I have to investigate further.

[DrG]

I looked up "mouse food cache" and did find evidence that sometimes they will also store food, like squirrels. It's the only explanation for the photos I showed previously, since only something of that size could possibly have climbed into the drawer and created the little caches of food (although I am still shocked that it could have carried so many thin fragile strands of spaghetti into such tight spaces and lined them up... that's just unbelievable).

Many small rodents, including mice, will, in fact hoard food. It has been studied quite a bit...e.g.,

https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2006.171
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03192618

I believe that mouse food hoarding behavior is different than squirrels, for example, in that their caches are close to their home nest.

I am less impressed by what a good job that they did than I am wondering how many were at work to get all that done. Time will tell I guess.

Here is a good pop article on it https://www.skedaddlewildlife.com/blog/mice-are-storing-food-for-winter/

[james_s]

That sounds like exactly what happened when rats got into my mom's garage. She had extra food stored out there and they got into that, took the uncooked spaghetti out of the packages, ate most of a box of granola bars, they even nibbled into about a dozen cans of diet Coke and made a mess on the floor with that. Later I found they had chewed up a garden hose and left green vinyl sawdust on the floor, and they got into several boxes of documents and pulled a bunch of the insulation out of her attic. Peed all over the place and left droppings everywhere. Made a real mess by the time I discovered what had happened and started trapping them.

[Kjelt]

(although I am still shocked that it could have carried so many thin fragile strands of spaghetti into such tight spaces and lined them up... that's just unbelievable).

Yes indeed, the stuff I always saw from mice were always broken to transport fast and easily. Nests were made of all kind of stuff, paper, carton, pieces of cloths, the vilt of the hammers of the piano, all torn to little bits to make it fluffy.
It makes little sense for such a small rodent to transport the strands in their entirety so I can understand your doubt.

[james_s]

When I was a kid mice got into our garage and stashed a bunch of dog food somewhere in the exhaust system of my dad's classic Jaguar. They also ripped a hole in the leather and pulled some of the stuffing out of one of the seats, which I remember he was very unhappy about. He found out about the stash after he started up the car and it backfired and shot a bunch of kibbles up the driveway.

[coppercone2]

does that spaghetti not seem a bit long to be carried by a mouse?


From experience mouse = piles of shit. Like alot. Like Jurassic park triceratops shit. If you just found 1 mouse turd and all that its a little suspicious. Maybe they have toilet training near food stores (maybe to hide it from other mice or prevent themselves from being sick).

Check for damage to the door seals near the bottom leading to the area. A common entrance is a slightly bowed door. They will remove the gasket in a inconspicuous place near the bottom of the door and squeeze through even if it makes a seal that seems decent enough for a human.