An Unexpected visitor

There is nothing like an unexpected visitor. We have had two this week and they are the most unfavourable kind. I guess some details would be in order. It has been pretty cold here, -10C or colder (not sure what that is in degrees F). Earlier this week I went down to the basement to get something for dinner prep and noticed the most unusual hole in the bag of noodles. I called Michael into the kitchen and show him, he confirmed my thoughts- bite marks. Oh no!! We have a critter, that is just too creepy. We went downstairs and looked around, first we sorted through all the food and threw out all the cartons that had been compromised and put the rest into resealable plastic tubs. Now it was time to find out where the critter or critters got in. We have a very well sealed, dry basement so this took a little off guard. There were only 2 entrances that we could think of, the dryer vent and the air exchanger vents. After close inspection it was discovered it was the air exchanger, Michael went out to check the outside vents sure enough the grate had fallen off. So now we know how they got in but where and what were they. Living in the country and with the drop in temperature we suspected that it was likely field mice looking for warmth and food. Michael went and picked up some traps and a grate for the vent. When he came back we set the traps, with peanut butter, and tuck taped the hole in the vent tubing.
With that part of the problem solved Michael thought we had better look for a nest- oh yuk!!! the thought still gives me the creeps. The basement has been needing a good cleaning, we now have instant motivation.

update:
Well, two field mice and a whopping decluttering marathon the basement is about 1/2 way done. We've already taken a load to Value Village ( a Canadian chain of thrift stores). We have a load ready to go to the dump, another load ready to go to VV, a load of clothes that I will give to Red Cross and recycling coming out the wazoo ( is that a word). Here we recycle everything, anything paper, plastic, metal, glass and even tetra paks so that can really amount to a lot of stuff. I wished I'd taken before and after pictures, it is a very freeing feeling to get rid of all that stuff that I won't use again, especially the stuff that someone else might be able to use.