Outdoors: 'As temperatures fall, you may find there's a moose, loose, about your hoose'

It is a persistent noise that seems many decibels above what should be possible for such a small creature, which inevitably conjures up nightmarish images that something larger and more sinister is on the prowl.

It's a noise that really stresses me, not because I'm afraid of mice, but rather because my wife is, and as I lie awake listening to one rummaging around in the attic, I pray that her slumber is not disturbed for if she does stir, then the following day will be one of chaotic turmoil due to her insistence that the house is deep-cleaned from top to bottom.

After spending the summer outdoors, many house mice seek the sanctuary of human dwellings at this time of year in search of food and warmth. They are prodigious breeders and over the course of a summer the mice from one nest will have multiplied many times over.

Litters of five to eight are born at monthly intervals and indoors they will continue to breed throughout the winter. A house mouse is sexually mature at only six weeks old.

When I lived in rural Fife, the first house mice would always appear inside soon after the fields had been harvested of their cereal crops, and it was not unusual to catch up to 20 mice in the attic during a winter.

Droppings are often the first indication that your house has some unwelcome visitors. Look out for the tiny black pellets in kitchen cupboards or under the sink, where the mice will have gained access through gaps between water pipes. The house mouse can squeeze through the tiniest of spaces and is an excellent climber.

No matter how clean your kitchen is, a house mouse will always find something to eat, whether it is breadcrumbs by the toaster or other tiny food fragments that have been overlooked on the work surface or floor.

A house mouse will happily climb into a packet of breakfast cereal, and if the top of the packet is closed, will gnaw its way through the cardboard leaving a neat, serrated hole.

The house mouse has been associated with man since earliest times, and the first UK record dates back to the Iron Age. It is believed to have originated in the Central Asian Steppes, but soon found the cereal grains stored by early farmers were an easier food option than scraping a living by eating wild seed.

The house mouse quickly spread its range, often as a stowaway on ships, resulting in it today having a worldwide distribution.

The house mouse can survive without being close to man if necessary. Dr Frank Fraser Darling recounted how, when living on Lunga in the Treshnish Isles in 1937, house mice moved into his camp despite no people having lived on the island for 80 years.

It was a different story on Hirta in St Kilda, however. When it was evacuated of people in 1930, the house mouse soon became extinct, probably because it wasn't able to compete in the wild with the island's field mice.

The house mouse is a great opportunist. It is also one our most persecuted creatures, yet it thrives where we thrive and will always do so, no matter how hard we try to control it. I find it rather reassuring that nature can still put one over on us.

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 16 October, 2010