Mice eat freesia bulbs - who knew?

[David Pilling]

A sad discovery today was that the pots of freesia bulbs which grow many leaves all through the Winter, and then if I am lucky throw up a flower or two had been ransacked by mice in the Summer. Previously they have been left untouched and I never thought they were at risk.

It brought to mind a poem by Eudora Welty which Jim McKenney used to quote the final lines of when as often happens rodent woe featured in the PBS list.

Squirrel, squirrel, burning bright,
Do not eat my bulbs tonight!

I think it bad and quite insidious
That you should eat my blue tigridias.

Squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris,
Leave to me my small muscaris,

Must you make your midnight snack, mouse,
Of Narcissus Mrs. Backhouse?

When you bite the pure leucojum,
Do you feel no taint of odium?

Must you chew till Kingdom Come
Hippeastrum advenum?

If in your tummy bloomed a lily,
Wouldn't you feel sort of silly?

Do you wish to tease and joke us
When you carry off a crocus?

Must you hang up in your pantries
All my Pink Queen zephyranthes?

Tell me, has it ever been thus,
Squirrels must eat the hyacinthus?

O little rodent,
I wish you wo'dn't!

[CG100]

Mice will eat, or at least try to eat, almost anything. I set traps in my greenhouse.
How much of this is really due to their oft-repeated "need to gnaw to keep teeth in trim", I have my doubts over.

Even worse are short-tailed voles, which are normally grazers, whereas mice are generalist vegetable-based omnivores. I normally get a few in my loft each winter - mice - but last week I was astonished to trap a short-tailed vole up there - over the years I must have trapped many, many hundreds of mice in and around the house, but short-tailed voles, even though common around the place, are something that I seldom trap.