Quiet as a mouse.

They are very noisy when gnawing through the woodwork or insulation of the house driving you crazy!

When I had the flat right under the roof, sometimes a mouse trying to enter through the roof slid down the steam barrier right above my bed screeching on the plastic with its feet and then hopping and bumping in order to try to get back up. I had to tear the roof open and install additional special insulation to block their paths in order to sleep every night.

And years ago, during summer I had meet with friends from engineering school to study for the tests in my backyard. There was a big stack of wood and an ancient "washing machine" where mice had stored their walnuts and drove us crazy gnawing on them. They were just out of reach. I had put sticks into the gaps of the wood stack except one and bought rat poison I mixed with ground salami. An hour later, a whole pound of that stuff was gone - and then the wood stack started to smell ugly some days later. Didn't work with the residents of the washing machine. I thought about putting wood into the furnace part and burn it but I had planted strawberries on top. Then a friend found my stash of chemicals in the cellar and mixed together some weed killer and other chemicals, bought some non-dairy creamer he also had mixed in and came up with a small tightly wrapped package with a sparkler attached he had put into the furnace. After a minute or so, the whole at least one ton washing machine hopped up, a mouse jumped out of the hole where the water intake was rusted out, ran about 6 yards real fast, tripped to its side and was dead.

Yes, they are only real quite when alone out in the open. Behind walls, in hiding places or in "swarms" they are highly noisy! They are only silent in places where a cat or an owl can get them.

I don't know what happened to my reply. It just disappeared.

Anyway, wondering if "quiet as a field mouse" is how the saying was first stated?

Perhaps the complete saying today could be: "Quiet as a field mouse, noisy as a house mouse"

?

Mice are "incontinent", they loose drops of pee all the time. And the more mice have walked a path, the more "friendly and save" it smells to other mice.

The best strategy to catch a lot of mice is to make some mice pee onto a towel for days or weeks, then use bits of this towel to make your traps appear a lot more friendly and safe to other mice.