I have a compost heap at the back of my property, probably 30-40 feet away from the house. It's one of those simple "circle of chicken wire on bare earth" ones, with most of the material being rotting vegetables from the boxes my wife gets and maybe an occasional leftover bone that's been stripped of meat. I don't really compost seriously, mainly using it so I don't feel so guilty when a fruit or vegetable goes unused and we toss it in there. About a month ago, I noticed that things seemed to be "escaping" out of a hole, which I initially assumed was just a matter of the soil within collapsing and there being a depression on the ground, but it's been happening fairly often even when I fill things in. More recently, I found two halves of a dead mouse by the compost heap, and today, I found a whole dead mouse. I haven't seen any live ones yet, but:
- it worries me a bit that I might be attracting vermin and
- I'm not certain why they're turning up dead next to the heap.