Mouse, gophers, and stumps

This morning I found a dead mouse in my mousetrap. Whoa... how did a mouse get in the house? I've only had two small mice in the house (last fall) after I insulated and sealed the house. This is spring. Why would a mouse want to come in the house in springtime? It's a dead mouse now.

I finally got to checking my pocket gopher traps after a few days now. Four dead pocket gophers. While pocket gophers are solitary, this is breeding season and sometimes a pair of them are in a tunnel complex. In one trap I caught the second one of two. In another trap I saw the tunnel was sealed with dirt against the trap with a dead pocket gopher completely inside the trap. A sign the mate is still in the tunnel.

I finally caught the pocket gopher in the last trap in the hayfield. But today when I was returning my neighbor's harrow I seen fresh dirt mounds. *sigh* So I am not done trapping the hayfield after all.

While checking the traps I also looked in on the still smoldering tree stump in the SW pasture. It is still smoking steadily. A large hole goes underground, but no fire could be seen today. Maybe it won't go all the way to China after all.

Of my five remaining tree stumps from yesterday I only have two left today. Two burnt down and another stump's side roots were thinned enough by fire I was able to cut through them. The tap root was short and I was able to wrestle the stump from the ground. I added more wood and re-burnt the final two stumps. I have a feeling tomorrow I will only have one stump left.

To get the fire going I have been getting dead grass from my northern neighbor's pile. Mr. D brought more dead grass from his lawn while I was there. He grew up in this area and is a logger. We had a conversation about the logging now (the loggers are currently waiting for the mountain roads to firm up after the spring thaw) and logging in the old days.

Mr D. told me the hard-to-burn stumps are larch (or tamarack). They are hard to burn; they do not rot in the ground; tough tree stumps to remove. The easy-to-burn stumps (like the one in the SW pasture) are yellow pine. Lots of pitch in these stumps. When they burn they have a sweet campfire smell.

I pushed the dirt back into the holes of a couple of former tree stumps. Without the stumps the spots are now low spots.

We had another cold night last night as we tied our record low of 26 F. At least the day was nice with a high temperature of 67 F and lots of sun.