The "uninvited" mouse & country critter tales

For about two years now I have kept fancy mice as pets and they are quite fascinating to watch,they are smarter than people think they are.They sleep all day long and at nighttime they eat and run the wheels and most importantly,they are clean!I do NOT like cleaning sh*t off the floor or vacuuming pet hair so mice in an aquarium work for me!
A couple of nights ago I was sitting here in the dining room at my computer and kept hearing a ruckus coming from the mouse habitat back in the corner of the den....sounded like squeaking and I also heard alot of litter being kicked up and I assumed they two female mice were chasing one another as they often do.After another 5 minutes of this,the squeaking got louder so I got up and walked into the den and peered into the aquarium and to my shock there was a feral,or wild field mouse inside with my two fancy mice!My mice were cool,they just wanted to sniff the "uninvited mouse"and check him out but he(or she) was going APESH*T!I cannot figure out for the life of me how it got inside,as the only opening in the cage is a cutout air panel on the lid and that sits 5 feet off the floor!My deduction is that after it got into my house,it smelled the mouse food(gourmet stuff from Petsmart)climbed up the sideboard the cage is on and got into the top!I know they can jump because the sumbitch jumped out!I was just standing there,jaw on the floor watching this tiny brown field mouse going nuts and just as I was going to wake hubby up to help me figure out how to remove it,it jumped up an entire foot off the bottom of the cage and directly out of the opening at the top of the cage!Good thing my domesticated fancy mice cannot jump that high or they would be GONE!I did not even look to see where it went,but my mice looked disappointed!
I live out in the country with a cornfield on one side and a chicken farm on the other so field mice getting inside the house are inevitable like death and taxes,no matter how clean your home is.They literally chew through the drywall once they get into the walls and unless you use Decon you will not get rid of them in cold weather.I use poison liberally in out of reach spots and it seems to work but every now and then one sneaks through the "gauntlet".They are on to mousetraps and avoid them as a result.Alot of people are freaked out by critters but in a rural area its just unavoidable.Last week we had an old gray fox in our backyard,and we have alot of brown snakes outdoors in the summer(I hate snakes but they eat field mice).They are harmless yard snakes and my daughter tries to catch them!We have also had deer right in our driveway and skunks in the yard.A neighbor of mine had a possum get into their house from underneath,so I count myself lucky!He got in through where their water pump is inside!
There are alot of feral cats around that keep the mouse population in check and they also nail the occasional broiler chicken that escapes from the neighborhood when the catchers come to take them for processing.All in all,it is not too bad.I have nothing against mice,I just prefer my mice from Petsmart and in a cage!