Moussaka

I make moussaka a lot but only the vegetarian variety.  Still, on the last two visits to Tiny House Ontario I found that a family of mice moved into the gas BBQ.

In the early fall, a little mama mouse with five (about one day old) suckling babies ran out totally terrified.  Her little pink furless babes were (surprisingly) firmly attached on to her teats and stayed there whilst she she ran out of the base of the BBQ and about 15 feet away.  The poor terrified girl frantically squeezed into a crack by the Indian tree.

I wanted to use the BBQ.  Still,  I did not know about her and I certainly did not want to harm her or her babies; nor did I wish to see them out in the cold with no home!  This is when I put on a silicon mitt and carefully relocated the home right above the crack where she had squeezed.  I took the gorp out of a squash, and put this next to her newly relocated home and then took a pot and put this as a cover right on top of her nest (don’t worry there was a crack in the rocks for her to get out).  Then I placed a heavy rock on top of the pot and covered this with some leaves.  I thought that this might just be a great hidden and safe spot for a wild woods mama mouse.  Certainly safer than a gas oven!

On the December visit, after a few weeks away I opened up the BBQ again, this time and found that they had moved right back into the BBQ.  It was so cold that I could not stand to move them, so we simply used the small propane cooker and had tea and soup instead of roasting anything – particularly the little moussaka!  I left them put except to take a couple of photos because little genius found a small bag of mineral insulation and then built quite a little fort!  Here is the fort.  The baby photos are from the internet and not our woods mice.

Hopefully the BBQ keeps them warm this winter and they do not move into the Tiny House!