I live in a converted barn that for many decades must have provided a warm and comfortable winter retreat for mice from the surrounding fields. Descendants of these mice remain enthusiastic about sharing the house with us: we are less keen. Fortunately they tend to be only an autumn and winter problem. Mice need to gnaw in order to keep their teeth trim, which explains why they are enthusiastic consumers of such unpalatable items as pipe lagging and electrical cables. Last winter a pair gained entry to my fuse box, but I trapped them before they were able to plunge the house into darkness. I avoid using poison, relying instead on traditional traps, usually baited with peanut butter, though I have also used cheese and chocolate (they particularly like the latter).

Four species of mouse occur in Britain. The ubiquitous house mouse is probably not a native, but is thought to have come originally from the steppes of central Asia. It likes to live in company with man, and is happiest in urban situations. Smallest of the quartet is the harvest mouse, but I have never heard of these attractive creatures coming into houses, and I’m unsure of their status in this part of Suffolk. The remaining duo – yellow-necked and wood mice – are both country dwellers that will come indoors in the winter.The two are very similar. While the yellow-neck does indeed have a yellowish neck (or chest), it is not always obvious. It is larger and longer-tailed than the wood. Both species have bigger ears and eyes than the house mouse. While the wood mouse occurs throughout Britain, the yellow-neck has a much smaller and more southerly range. They do occur in this parish, and though I have only trapped wood mice, my neighbour has trapped yellow-necks inside his house. Studies have shown that wood normally outnumber yellow-necks by as much as four to one.

This autumn has been a particularly bad one for mice, and on several occasions recently they have woken us in the middle of the night, making an extraordinary amount of noise for such small creatures. The traps came out, and I caught five wood mice in our loft in seven days. However, by far the most surprising capture in our loft happened earlier this year when I caught a pygmy shrew. Shrews are rare visitors to houses and are unlikely to remain for long, as they need to eat five times their own weight in insects a day in order to survive. The fact that my shrew nibbled on the cheese suggests it was hungry, and possibly having got in the loft couldn’t get out again.