Mrs. Beloit walked away from the camera, visible for only an instant as the tape began to play. I’d best make sure I’m dressed when I do that, she thought as she watched herself. There was no movement at all on screen after that until the camera had shut off after five minutes.
At first, when the camera came back on, there was still no obvious movement. All four spectators watched closely.
“There, left of the stove,” Cathy Dixon said, pointing.
The others had picked up the movement almost as soon as she had, a hot spot between the stove and the kitchen cabinets. Imagination more than vision pictured a tiny creature looking out, surveying the room. Only after the animal moved out of the narrow lane was the camera able to provide a clear view of it. There was something of a collective gasp from the spectators when they saw that it was indeed another elephant-nosed mouse.
“Gotcha!” Harmon whispered, leaning closer to the television. If there are two, there must be more, maybe a lot more, he thought.
No one else said anything. They all watched the mouse move away from the stove, taking several steps then stopping to look around, showing fairly typical behavior—tentative motion, nervous alertness. At first, the mouse’s ranging appeared to be random, but after stopping twice to sniff the air—lifting its snout well above its head—the mouse zeroed in on the waiting trap and moved directly toward it.
The trap gave the mouse several minutes of difficulty. It went around it three times, stopping frequently, probing through the wire mesh with its snout, reaching toward the dish in the center. The mouse spent more than a minute near the spring-loaded gate that was meant to capture the mouse after it went inside. Twice, the creature put one foot forward as if to go in, but both times retreated instead.
Go on, go in, Harmon thought, unconsciously urging the mouse forward, forgetting that he was only watching a tape, and that the mouse would not go in because the trap had been empty.
The mouse made another circuit of the trap, reaching in through the mesh with its snout several times.
“There, I think he moved the dish,” Nick said. “Pushed it.”
Cathy shushed him.
The mouse continued around the trap. When it got to the far side this time, it made a more determined effort to reach the glass dish with its snout. And succeeded. The viewers could not see exactly what happened—the resolution was not good enough to actually let them see the tiny ants that had been used for bait—but it appeared that the mouse simply sucked them up.
“The smoking gun!” Nick crowed.
The mouse went around the trap once more. Then it made tentative starts in several directions away from it. Finally, though, it simply returned to the space between stove and cabinets where it had first appeared. The camera continued to run through the end of five minutes without motion.
The next view was in daylight, as Mrs. Beloit came in to shut off the camera. There was just one quick image of her.
The second tape showed two excursions other than Mrs. Beloit’s appearances. The first trek showed an elephant-nosed mouse investigating the other trap but giving up and going back under the bathroom vanity. Then there was a second expedition. This time, after nearly ten minutes of effort, the mouse managed to get to the ants in the second trap.
“Is there any way to tell if that’s the same mouse both times?” Nick asked. “Or if either is the one from the kitchen?”
“If you want to get stills made from the tape and spend some time doing detailed measurements, you might be able to tell about the ones in the bathroom,” Griffin suggested. “If they show significant differences in size you might be able to tell that they’re different specimens. Comparing that to the kitchen one would be more difficult—different distance and angle from the camera to the mouse. Of course, it could be three different mice and you still wouldn’t be able to tell if they’re all the same size.”
“I think I’ll hold off then,” Nick said, retreating quickly. “That sounds too much like counting the holes in acoustic tiles.”
“You still going to leave ants in those traps?” Mrs. Beloit asked. “Seeing as how those mice can get at them without going in anyway.”
Griffin considered that for a moment. “I think that if we put a smaller mesh around the sides of the traps, something like screening, it should do the trick. That closes off the easy access to the ants. The only way the mice will be able to get them out then is to go inside.”
“Looked like they knew better than that,” Marietta observed. “Wouldn’t none of them go in. Like they knew it was a trap.”
“If they’re hungry enough, they’ll go in even if they are suspicious,” Nick said. “Hunger’s a powerful force.”
“We should have some screening in the van, in one of those brown cases in the back. Nick, you want to run out and see what you can find?” Harmon handed Nick the keys. “And something to attach it to the trap.”
He turned to Mrs. Beloit. “He’s right about hunger being a strong inducement. It depends how hungry the mice are.”
After the traps had been modified, Griffin and Peragamos started using the fiber-optic equipment to probe inside the walls. They started in the upstairs bathroom because it was easier to get to the holes leading under the floor and behind the wall there than in the kitchen. While they worked the fiber-optic cable, Cathy started probing the walls of the house with the sound equipment, room by room. Her work went more quickly. Moving the fiberoptic cable around, reaching for the small gaps in the insulation and the holes through studs where wires and pipes ran, was a slow job for the two men. It was perhaps inevitable that Cathy was the first to report success.
“Sounds like a lot of heartbeats,” she said when her companions came to the kitchen in response to her call. “It must be a nest. Right here.” The location was halfway up the wall, behind and just above the counter left of the sink.
First Professor Griffin and then Nick Peragamos took the sound gear. The sound was a soft chirping, a nearly constant noise. With a mouse’s heart rate over 700 beats per minute, there could be no more definition than that. To get anything more, they would have to take the audio recording being made and slow it down considerably and use other equipment—back in the lab—to try to get a count.
Harmon listened for more than a minute, then said, “I think you’re right, Cathy,” as he passed the earphones to Nick. “It’s going to be rough getting the camera probe up there, though.”
“I’m a whole lot more concerned about getting the mice out of there,” Marietta said from behind the others. “I don’t want mice nesting in my kitchen.”
“We want them out of there also, Mrs. Beloit,” Griffin said, turning toward her and turning on a smile. “Especially if they’re your elephant-nosed mice and not the common sort.”
“I don’t care what kind they are, I just want to get rid of them as fast as I can,” she replied.
“I understand. We’ll do what we can.” Harmon turned to Cathy. “Have you finished your survey of the kitchen?”
She shook her head. “I just started at the corner by the stove and got this far. When I heard the mice there, I called you right away.”
“Well, finish in here with the sound equipment. If there’s one nest, there might be others. Nick and I won’t start working with the cables in here until you’re done. We’d make too much noise for you to pick up anything.”
“We going back upstairs to finish in the bathroom there?” Nick asked.
Harmon’s hesitation was too fleeting for anyone to pick up on it. “No. We’ll wait for Cathy to finish in here, then try to get a glass eye into that nest. She can finish the other rooms while we do that.”