Horse Farms - Naaaaaaay, A-CHOO!

We found a few horse farms near Sienna that looked promising for catching mice. Like all of the other places, the people at both stables were really nice about the trap setting and led us to the places that they thought would be good hide outs for them. Now, I'm pretty allergic to horses, so I normally don't frequent horse farms, but it actually wasn't all that bad. We set about 30 traps all together in and around the stables, and while we were in one of the stables, a mousey looking thing went running right in front of us along this hose thing that was hanging from the ceiling. So, it seemed promising.

In the morning, we got to the first stable around 8am and went around collecting the traps. There was one in the room with all the horse feed that had something in it, but Ondrej was sure it was a rat, cause it was way too heavy to be the mouse he was looking for. The rest of the traps at the first stable were empty! Some of them were completely clean of all the oats that he was using as bait, because ants came in and dragged them away, one by one. Theives! So we collected all the empty traps and then took the one with the big rat in it out to the parking lot. Normally he will turn the trap upside down and shake whatever is in it into a ziploc bag, but this rat was too big. It was somehow jammed in the trap and couldn't even move or turn around. So he just pulled one of the wires out of the trap so it would come open and had to coax it out. Even after the trap was open, the rat just sat there for a few minutes. But finally he jumped out of the trap and ran off.

We went to the second horse stable and found most of the traps empty, but one of the traps with something in it. It was a lot lighter than the other one, but probably still to heavy to be a mouse.
It was small enough to shake into a ziploc bag so we took it to the parking lot and he opened the trap and out it fell into the bag. It was another rat, a smaller one. It was so cute! Since this one was smaller, and cause apparantly rats (even though they are cute) are pests, he wanted to kill it. I got all upset cause it was cute and I didn't want it to die, so he said if I would hold it while he was driving we could drive a few miles away and release it into the woods. So thats what we did with it. I know, I know....



So now after having set traps all over the place, and not been successful catching mice, I'm not sure if the mouse hunting mission is going to continue. Ondrej is in the process of working it out with his boss. So we drove all the way from Sienna to Geneva, Switzerland and here we are now in a little town called Coppet, just outside Geneva. Driving in Italy was pretty chaotic, the signs were all over the place, and I guess my navigation skills leave a lot to be desired. We drove along the Cinque Terre coastline on the way, which is a UNESCO protected area of little italian villages near Genoa. I have a friend here, Line, that I met in 1997 during a study abroad semester in Australia. She is here working for the UN, so we just spent the afternoon catching up, did some kayaking at the lake and tomorrow we will check out Geneva and hopefully go on a tour of the UN.