I have a story to report. The other night I was heading for bed, thinking "Ah - nice early night", when in through the door comes Smudge, mowling at the top of his voice - which is always the signal that he's got some poor piece of the local fauna in his gob. I immediately - and in a very practised manner - start shouting at him "Don't drop it! Don't drop it!". This has the usual result - he drops it, and an extremely active woodmouse disappears at high speed under the cooker. This isn't quite as bad as it used to be, before I mouseproofed the underside of the cooker. In those days it was possible for an enterprising and unnoticed escapee to set up home in the cooker's fibreglass insulation. Such nest would quickly fill up with mouse wee, poo and stolen cat-biscuits. The smell when the oven was on was indescribable - and initially inexplicable.
Anyway I get the dustpan - favoured mouse catching method - and tilt the cooker on its side. Staring out at me are not one but two of the beggars. One I catch, the other just disappears, and I mean disappears - you've no idea how adept mice are at vanishing under circumstances where there's nowhere to go. Anyway I can't face hunting the kitchen for the damn thing, so I put down the humane trap and set off for bed. Then I think I'll lock the catflap, since if Smudge is on a roll, he'll be bringing rodents into the bedroom just as I head for the land of nod. Course I can't lock it, because Tabs is out, so I set it for "ins but no outs", and go to bed. At five a.m. Smudge wakes me up and will not let me go back to sleep. In the end I give in, and think I'll go down and let him out. Downstairs I find that the humane trap has caught the mouse, the neighbour's tomcat has come in and can't get out and has been asleep on the sofa (though now he's climbing the walls) and Tabs has been sick with the excitement of it all. I let them all out, shut the kitchen door go back to bed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Ah, them fieldmouses are proper magicians, they are.
I had similar experience in the 80's when, returning to bed with an early morning cuppa for me and the missus, I espied what I initially took for a large spider on t'stairs. Well, I realised what a mistake I'd made when it took off at somewhere near the mousely equivalent of the speed of sound, ending up under the spare bedroom carpet in one of those carpet-humps you get to slow slugs down in damp houses...
With only a cowboy-boot to hand (it was the 80's remember) and with my six-year-old step-daughter helping out excitedly, I actually managed to trap the little thing (I was much younger in those days) and off we headed down the stairs to release it...
... only, half way down, with my little cherub a step ahead of me, the mouse appears on the rim of the boot, takes a look at my ugly mug and decides to risk flight, sans-wings, landing upon the poor wee girl's head (albeit for only 3 micro-seconds) before taking further leap down the remaining stairs and (obviously engaging the mouse-turbo-drive-2000 they all have) *poof* - across the living room and under the gas fire - never to be seen again.
Perhaps they had a tunnel from my fireplace to your garden...
Post a Comment