The Mouse

The other day I discovered an astonishing thing. There has been a mouse in the house. It invaded my pantry and ate into a foil packet of Beef Stroganof mix. I can hear it talking to another neighbourhood mouse, now. “Found some food in No 40 Church Street. It was OK but it had a very strong metallic taste.”

But I’m still amazed that the mouse visited at all. Why, you ask, is that so astonishing?

Well, it’s such a death-defying thing for a mouse to do. After all, it runs the gauntlet of so many mouse-murderous things in my house.

Firstly, there is Greyder the Cat. Greyder is so-named because (a) he is grey and white, but mainly grey, (b) he is the size of your average grader and (c) at full purr, he sounds like one. While Greyder may be a little over-fed and slow in the pursuit department, the mouse would be in real trouble if Greyder sat on him.

And if Greyder mistook the mouse for a pouch of Jellimeat, the vermin’s days would be up.

And there are the other deadly mousetraps. Such as the automatic rubbish bins. There are times when these bins remind me of the finger-eating till in the TV program “Open All Hours”.

As they are designed to do, their lid flies open when you wave anything in front of the sensor on them. Then, a few seconds later, the lid snaps closed with a “whap!”

But these bins can be deadly! They are fine if you don’t dither around while dropping your waste into them. But if you hesitate in your rubbish disposal for just a second too long, as you stand close to the bin shedding your rubbish the bin beast will snap its lid shut onto any sensitive protuberance you may have within striking distance. Nasty!

For this reason, mice, being devotees of rubbish bins or, more to the point, the contents thereof, stand a ggreat chance of finding that the rubbish bin is one big mousetrap.

And, if those two anti-mouse features weren’t enough, Harvey, the vacuum cleaner, now lies in wait.

Well, rather than lying in wait, little round automatic vacuum cleaner Harvey is likely to be found scuttling around the floor like a demented, flat robot. He moves in quite unpredictable directions, bouncing off walls, performing ballet spirals at unexpected moments, and makes seemingly random direction changes that any human, cat, or mouse least expects.

Greyder the Cat has wised up now and gives Harvey a very wide berth. But any unawares mouse intruder is not likely to be so circumspect and would quickly fall victim to Harvey’s suction system. For this reason, whenever I empty Harvey’s dustbag, I half expect to find therein a sad little mouse carcase covered with the accumulated grunge and fluff that has been sucked up from this Edwardian villa’s floor coverings.

Of course, the mouse would be quite safe if it was making a night soirée. That’s because, at night when Harvey the vacuum cleaner can’t sense a light source, he automatically stops after seven minutes of searching. Then he just sits there and sulks until dawn.

If Harvey had been at work last night (instead he was recharging his batteries) this night-time cut out feature would have come into action as the lights went off. For there was a power cut here in Masterton last night. It not only plunged Masterton into darkness with a resulting high probability of a spike in births in nine months time, but also cut power to the nearby town of Carterton.

I know. With my computer deprived of life-giving electricity and having nothing else to do, I went for a drive to Carterton and looked. All was dark

I turned around and started to drive back. It was then I came upon a Police drink/drive checkpoint. A Policeman shoved what looked like a TV remote in my face and asked my name and address.

I recited name and address in my best BBC voice and saw that the alcohol-detector dial read “No Alcohol Detected”. As the Policeman stood there in the dark, I looked up at him and said: “Well, what else do your expect on a night like this. I only drink Light Beer”.

As I drove away, I saw his shoulders shaking. Sometimes they must feel like scragging smart alec motorists.

The power cut was the result of one suicidal possum. The creature climbed a tree near some very high voltage lines on Masterton’s Rennall Street, then swung to close to the lines. The electricity, sensing a nicely conductive body nearby, arced through the air and the possum, watched by some people wandering along the street below, disappeared in a pungent flash of light. Having been zapped into a small pile of cinders and smell, the creature would thus have been completely unaware of the achaos and activity he caused in Masterton and surrounding countryside both immediately after his act, and in nine months time.

And they reckon the dove is the symbol of love!

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Allan