It’s been an exciting week, with many visitors to our humble abode.
The trouble is, they weren’t invited, and they’re eating everything and leaving a right mess.
If I’m honest, it’s partially my fault. When I first picked up the bag of bird seed in the cellar drawer, and spotted some loose bits in the bottom, I should have investigated. It was only when I moved the bag of peanuts days later that I realised there were a lot of holes in bags, and a large amount of empty husks.
In the usual, paranoid way, on realising we were under attack, I immediately spun round, expecting to see something (and at this stage, I wasn’t clear what, so looked wildly up as well as down) crawling, scampering, running, hovering, or even doing some kind of interpretive dance.
My guess was that we had a mouse loose about the house. Being sensible, I transferred the seeds and nuts into tins. I’d purchased them to keep outdoor feathered animals fed, not uninvited furry indoor ones.
I was somewhat surprised the next day to find the lid off one of the tins, and more bits of seed casing strewn about the place. Concerned, I started trying to list all the creatures I knew that understood how to open tins. After half an hour of pained facial expressions and puzzlement, I concluded it could only be another human being. After confirming Mrs G hadn’t been snacking, I parcel-taped the lid on, and headed out to the local DIY store to buy a trap.
Although my scary exterior says otherwise, I’m something of a softy, so purchased a humane trap, rushed home, and loaded it with some sunflower seeds, placed it in the drawer and went about my day. Returning later, I discovered the seed had gone, and, by way of defiant gesture, some tiny poo left for me instead.
OK, so they can open tins, and successfully negotiate a trap without triggering it. We’ve been invaded by furry Tom Cruise mice, playing out their own version of Mission Impossible - no need to panic just yet. They probably can’t do door handles. Can they?
The same thing happened again, the next day, before, finally, the trap captured a tiny, scared mouse. I took him outside and let him go, warning him not to come back, which probably doesn’t work, as I don’t think mice understand English.
Just in case there was another one, I reset the trap. The following evening, I checked and thought “that’s funny – the trap seems to be really dark on the inside...” before realising the reason for this was the three mice crammed in there.
Mrs G assisted with holding a torch whilst I put the trio of teensy terrors outside, but it’s hard to see exactly what you’re doing when the torch is 10 feet away and shaking violently.
At the weekend we had to buy a new trap, as the old one had been so aggressively nibbled, the mechanism had broken. The lady at the counter said I needed to take the captured mice a mile away. Do they have SatNav, then? Should I provide a packed lunch?
Since then, four more have been caught, and I’ve spent an entertaining couple of hours with a bag of cement, filling any holes in the cellar walls that looked big enough for a mouse to sneak through.
The patter of tiny feet? No thanks – I’ve got my own.
This post first appeared as my 'Thank Grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening mail, on the 1st of November 2013. You can view the version the paper used here, where they replaced the title with "Tiny visitors are big on cunning", and helpfully replaced an unfortunate wrong tense incident, which although poor proofing by me, I hope you can forgive me for.
By way of explanation, when I sit down to write my column, I type away, without any attention to spelling, grammar, or anything to do with it being correct in any way. I know that a 'page' is about 500 words, so I have a vague guide as to when to stop. Sometimes, though, I haven't finished what I want to say by the bottom of the sheet, so try and wrap it up soon after, saying what I felt needed to be said.
I then go back through it, correcting spelling etc, and attempting to turn it into readable sense. Then, finally, I look at the word count. If I'm over, I go through it again to see if I can loose any words, by rearranging sentences, or deleting them altogether.
This one way a full 20% fat after the first tidy up. For a change, I saved it with a different name, then edited it down. What you have here is not the version submitted to the paper (which is what I usually do), but the full original, before my edit. I changed tenses in the final cut, as it helped a bit with shortening it. But one obviously slipped through the net...
The mouse saga continues, too. They've now destroyed a second trap, meaning we've had to move on to a more robust, metal, one, that can hold 10 mice. We did have a full 24 hours without one, and the last one was taken out for a long walk was last night.
We've had people telling us you need to take them three miles away - to be honest, if they could find themselves a way back from even a mile, I'd be pretty impressed.
Halloween night was especially fun, as I wandered the streets of Arnside holding a mouse in a plastic tube, trying to find a suitable point where no-one was around, to let the little scamp out.
To make our week even more annoying, a leaking toilet has damaged our kitchen ceiling. The only upside is, if it does it again, it might flood the cellar, thus solving the mouse problem. Unless they've figured out how to build sailing craft, in which case we're screwed.
The metal mouse trap is pretty sophisticated, with sprung ramps that will trap them inside once they've crawled over them. It looks a lot like a rodent-based version of TV classic The Crystal Maze, and I'm full expecting a mousey Richard O-Brien to camply shout "To the crystal dooooome!" any second, whilst other mice try to catch some falling bits of gold-coloured foil.
Mice captured and released = 17.
Traps destroyed = 2.
Financial cost to date = about £30.
Emotional damage sustained = don't ask...
(Compilation CD odyssey continues - Currently rockin' "The Best Of Bond... James Bond". )
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