The mice are stealing my peas right out of the ground. They don't even wait for the plants to come up; they just dig the peas out of the ground after I've planted them. I heard that mice don't like mint, so I've strewn peppermint all over the areas where I planted the pea plants; I'm hoping some are still left in the ground and that this will allow them to actually come up and form pea plants. Otherwise, I'm not sure what we'll do.
I tried to bargain with the mice. I actually went out and sat near their area for a while, and talked to them. (Yeah, I know this makes me sound completely loony, but I had to try it anyway.) I told them they could share the wild sunflower seed with the birds the way they did last year, and if they stayed in their area, I'd leave the last few peas alone for them or even shell them and put them in their area for them to find. But it seems they don't understand me. One even came up onto the picnic table on the patio, and when I switched on the light, it sat there for a moment, staring at me with its big eyes--and this was within an hour of my attempts to communicate with them. I wasn't sure whether they were taking me up on my offer or defying me, but within three days, there was the evidence of more peas stolen from the planter boxes. So much for trying to work with them, Findhorn-style. Sigh. The Huz put out poison for them, and I hate to do that, but if they keep stealing the seed, none of us will have any of those delicious snow peas we enjoyed so very much last year. Unfortunately, what we will have is more mice.
Thank goodness they don't seem to care about the bean, cucumber, or carrot seeds. But I'll be very disappointed if we don't get any peas at all. They fed us all summer long last year; in September, we were still getting heirloom snow peas.
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