Why me, Mice?

Yes, mice. Who would have thought that I would be this angry about mice. I know that they have cute little whiskers and look harmless. Hah. Harmless!! Not here. I have a small berry farm in a backwoods area in the middle of (almost) nowhere. Well, thirty miles from a huge city, so that's almost the middle of nowhere. More on that later. I decided to grow some blueberries  which may or may not have been a good decision. Who knew that mice loved them too, only they love the roots, not the berries.  If you have blueberries, you know that you have to surround their roots with sawdust. Guess what likes to burrow through that nice soft sawdust? Mice!  So we're overrun with mice that you never see - they're below the ground. But you KNOW they're there - because the blueberry leaves start to wither, and then when you put your foot on either side of the plant, it sinks down about eight inches.  Doomed!! Doomed!! Do anything you want but at that point, you know you're going to have to put a new plant in the ground, and lose a whole year (or five years!) of growth.  Aw, come on, you say, leave the poor little mice a few plants to eat. How about one hundred and fifty last year?  Yes, one hundred and fifty plants that the mice ate in one summer. That's out of our total blueberry patch of about 1700 plants. So now I have to dig, plant, sawdust, sweat, swear and generally curse the luck.  Those of you that are slightly less bleeding hearts will no doubt say "poison the bastards". Ah, easy to do - not.  You see, we have dogs, and the DH has no sense of dog (or personal) safety. So I can put poison out in boxes that say "poison" but the dogs (and cats) can't read, and the DH chooses not to. I've come up with a box within a box within a box system that may be safer for the "others" but I wonder if the mice will be able to travel that labyrinth instead of staying in the ground eating those tasty roots. Last fall I decided to plant garlic in between the plants and some other flowering plant that smells disgusting - designed to repel mice. Neither grew.  I guess that they, unlike the mice, don't like sawdust in the ground. But here's the ultimate irony. Last year we had a bumper crop (before mice) and although we sold lots of them, we have quite a few hundred pounds left in the freezer, despite advertising.  We don't spray our bushes with any of the many fungicides and pesticides used for blueberries. More on THAT later too! So now we have these elite blueberries languishing in the freezer.  What to do? I know, let's pretend we're one of the witches from MacBeth and make them into elite "jambelly" - that's jam without seeds.  And guess who gets to preside over the massive pot, waiting anxiously over the steaming pot for that telltale "rolling boil" to start. You betcha! Next time - the geese.