8/23-25/05 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I had a dentist appointment in the morning so I didn't arrive at the property until 2:00. There was no frog in the gate can. The water heater wouldn't light so I got my propane torch out to see if I could light it that way. That didn't work either. I decided to give up on it for the time being, but since I had the torch there, I ran it into the heater for a while to give me at least some warm water to start with. I decided to work on the problem later.

I moved in and had lunch and thought about the problem. Gas seemed to come out the pilot while I held the button down, but there never seemed to be gas to the main burner. Since I had the thermocouple red hot and it still didn't work, I figured that the thermocouple connection might be open. I took a wrench out and tried tightening and loosening the thermocouple connector as I applied the torch. Sure enough, the connection just wasn't made tight enough. When I tightened it up, the thing started working.

When I went up to the cabin, I found a dead mouse in each of two of the three traps. The peanut was also gone from the floor. I reset the traps and set another peanut out on the floor. Hopefully, those were the last mice in the building.

Before I quit for the day, I went to work and cleaned the logs around five of the eight seams I had chinked last week.

On Wednesday the peanut was gone from the floor again. Rats! (I guess I mean mice!) One trap was sprung with the bait gone and the other two had the bait eaten up but the traps were still set. I'm dealing with some clever mice here.

At some point, it dawned on me that there was a gap under the back door also. Then I remembered what I had done. When I installed the doors, I wasn't sure if a mouse could get through that space or not. To make sure they couldn't, I placed a strip of metal against each door and held them there with concrete blocks. The metal covered the gap completely so no mouse could get through. My plan was that after I had evicted all the rodents and convinced myself that they couldn't get into the building any other way, then I would take those metal strips away and see if mice could get in.

As it happened, it had been nearly a year since the peanuts had disappeared from the floor which meant that there had been no mice in the building. Then, at some point, I got careless about putting that metal strip against the front door, and since I wasn't getting any mice, I didn't think they could get under there. Then, I also quit putting the strip against the back door, and I just forgot all about the possibility of mice getting in that way. Now it all came back to me. I realized I needed to raise that back door threshold too.

I got out my vise-grip and Phillips bit and raised the back threshold so it almost touched the bottom of the door. It was now mouse-proof.

Then I went to work and insulated all the seams between Grid D3 and B3 and fed the jays before lunch.

After lunch, I reset the three mouse traps and I also set the ramp back up to the rodent valve. I salted the ramp and the valve pipe with peanuts to try to get the mice to leave that way. I also put one peanut on the valve flap.

Then I chinked the seams between Grid D3 and C3. These seams included the short logs between the windows and directly behind the log columns. It is very awkward to chink because I can't get the trowel in there very well. It was very slow going. Also, the mortar seemed to be extra sandy and crumbly. I don't know if I had a bad sack of mortar mix or what, but it added to the problem of chinking. I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked.

On Thursday morning the trap in the crawl space was sprung again and the two traps upstairs were still set with the bait gone. All the peanuts were gone from the ramp and from the inside of the rodent valve. The one on the flap was also gone and the flap was still shut. I could see mouse footprints in the dust on the flap so the tension holding the flap shut was evidently too strong. It is clear that the rodent wars are on again and I am up against some clever mice.

I reset the three traps again but this time I wedged a piece of peanut in each of the bait holders thinking that the mouse would have to work to get it out and be more likely to set the trap off. I put peanuts back on the ramp and in the rodent valve and I put another one on the valve flap. I also adjusted the valve flap so that it was very sensitive. It could barely hold that peanut I put in there. It should dump a mouse out on the ground now if he hops down onto it. We'll see next week.

I cleaned most of the logs I had chinked, had lunch, packed up, and left for home at 1:00.