Get a CAT. Both Problems Solved.
Many moons ago my dad had a partnership in a mining claim in Nevada that was in the middle of nowhere, but isn't everything in Nevada?
He took me out there when I was 4 or 5 and we stayed in the cabin that was on the property. One night I had to take a dump so I grabbed the flashlight and headed to the little house a ways away from the cabin. While sitting there doing my business I felt something at my feet. I turned on the light and was so startled that I didn't have to wipe after seeing the snake.
That next morning while eating breakfast I told my dad of my adventure while we were sitting at the table with one of his partners who usually stayed at the mine all summer. The partner asked me what kind of snake it was and I just said that it was a snake and needed to be killed. He asked me if it looked like the one over in the wood box? I saw that snake and things puckered up so tight that I didn't have to go to the bathroom for a month.
He then explained that they had tried to keep cats around but that the coyotes would catch and eat them. And without cats they were overran with mice, but they found that the coyotes would leave the bull snakes alone and that the snakes did a pretty good job of getting rid of the mice in the cabin, so they left the snakes to their job.
They would however dispatch the rattle snakes that would visit the property since my dad and a couple of the labors had been bitten by them.
