An empty house next to us burnt down in the night, and we were deep into our first mouse-war.
The mouse influx at this time of year is normal in Sweden as the mice seek warm areas to hide from the cold, which includes in all the tiny gaps in the older houses. When we first realised there were mice in the house structure it was a bit of a surprise. I told the chimney inspector when he came to visit and he looked like he had his own mice problems and said "Welcome to Sweden". Although we wanted to live-capture them, in the end we removed 10 mice with deadly traps, 2 died in the cellar, and 1 we live-caught and released far away. I put two motion-sensing webcams in the attic and in a suspected area the mice might use in a wall cavity, and these worked really well at working out how many mice we had, and how they behaved with the various traps we tried. By the end of November all the mice were gone. One tiny shrew survived the winter, and was too small to trigger any trap, but we only saw it about once every two months.
Colourful sunsets
Early November birdtable
Early November fields
Woke up to find the neighbours (empty) house had burnt down
Fire service - water pump
Fire extinguishers
Blocked drainage
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Snowmobile route
Goodby old freezer
More basment repainting
First concrete project
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Mouse war
More snow
Growlights
Darkness setting in
lights on the bridge
Freezer leak
Farm on the hill