HSU IT Department

Many years ago, in the fall, I put down some black plastic sheeting in my front yard and covered it with leaves in order to eradicate the grass so that I could plant native plants the following spring. That winter, we had a heavy snowstorm, with about a foot of really wet, heavy snow and ice. When spring came around and it was time to pull up the plastic and start planting, I was horrified by what I discovered. Mice had made tunnels under the snow, but also under the sheering. The snow had been so heavy that it had squashed all the mice. As I rolled up the sheeting, it had all these little dead, squashed bodies sticking to it. There must have been a hundred of them. (It was a large area and they were densely packed.) After that, I decided to kill off the grass with layers of newspaper followed by leaves. It decomposes on its own so that I don't have to roll it up and contend with a horror scene in my garden.

Buy yes, the mice are all under there, under all that snow, like a bunch of furry little wights from beyond The Wall....