Of mice and bunnies

I don't remember the song about Little Bunny Foo Foo from my childhood. I remember a friend's 6 year-old daughter singing it to me with great glee some years ago though:

Little bunny, Foo Foo

Hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bopping them on the head

No worse than many fairy tales of course, but some of the videos of it that I found online were pretty gruesome. Of course, there are sanitized versions around with no mention of the bopping on the head:

Little Bunny Foo Foo


On Saturday DS asked me a question I couldn't make sense of to start with.

- D'you think the bunny in the attic will keep me awake tonight?
- Huh?
- The bunny bopping the field mice on the head.

I explained that Little Bunny Foo Foo and the Easter Bunny are different rabbits, and that the Easter Bunny was unlikely to be hunting mice in our attic. He didn't seem entirely convinced. I guess he thinks rabbits are carnivores, despite seeing them regularly in the backyard eating the vegetation.

We do have mice in the attic, and would like them to be gone, but imaginary bunnies are not likely to be the answer to our problem. Nor indeed are the real bunnies we have in the yard, especially as they have problems of their own. Instead, DH has installed some (humane) traps in the basement. He complains about mice in the attic, but puts the traps in the basement. Where's the logic in that, I hear you asking. The logic in that is that the piece of attic where we hear the mice most often is inaccessible (to humans at least!), so we can't put any traps up there. The logic in that is that the traps in the basement have been being licked clean by the mice on a regular basis - so we know they're down there too - we just don't hear them as much as the ones above us. And we have caught mice in the basement before. In fact, we caught one this morning, and here he is having been transferred to a glass jar so the children could see him before he was taken back outside.


Not a wonderful photo I'm afraid, because my camera kept wanting to focus on the glass instead of the rodent. He appeared fairly traumatised by the whole experience of being caught, but I'm sure he'll be back. With friends. After all, he's found a nice supply of food in our basement. The peanut butter-laden traps have been down there for weeks and the mice have been cleaning them out on a regular basis and managing not to get caught until today. Why wouldn't he try to come back?