When the garden is gone, and the firewood is stacked up high, little paws come a-creeping.

When the nights are nippy and the north wind promises snow, long-pointy noses peek into warm places.

Late autumn season is mouse season!

Mice will squeeze into tiny cracks and crevices looking for a way indoors, especially at this time of the year.

Karen Rose Wils

This is the time when you are most likely to discover the pesky long-tails in your house, basement, garage, shed or deer blind.

After a summer of producing many litters of offspring, the mouse population is at its highest and there is nothing these little grey creatures like better than to find a cozy place for winter.

A lot of people don’t know that there is more than one kind of mouse out there. Upper Michigan has two common ones, the deer mouse and the house mouse (and two uncommon ones, the white footed mouse and the jumping mouse).

Everybody is familiar with the big-eyed deer mouse. This is the one we see so often in the summer, in a woodpile or in an outhouse.

Deer mice are reddish-brown in color with white underparts. They have long but furry tails and very big ears and eyes. Deer mice are native to Michigan and they are very important to the food chain. Just about every predator, from a wolf to a weasel, likes to catch deer mice.

Deer mice are cute and comical to watch when they are in their natural habitat, a home in the woodlands.

Another mouse is out there — the house mouse, a native of Asia, thrives across Michigan.

House mice like to live in proximity to humans. Fields, barns, basements and warehouses are good places to find them. House mice are usually more troublesome and more likely to get into people’s homes than deer mice.

The house mouse looks more like a smaller version of a rat. They are gray with small eyes and ears. Their tails are less furry and scalier looking. House mice are smaller than deer mice.

A mouse is one of those creatures that either you think is cute or you absolutely hate it.

The best way to keep mice away from your house is to make sure that there is no food, crumbs, pet food, or wild bird seed left out. A cat is a good preventative measure, too.

Mice may not be our favorite thing, but on a frosty moonlit night the owl hoots, the bobcat prowls, and the fox sniffs. All of them love a good mouse tail.