There's a mouse loose...

...about this office. I think Spike may have taken it to heart when I pronounced the rat my dad found in the garden to have died of natural causes. Sugar used to bring in mice and birds all the time (and then when I found her, she'd roll around looking smug, and the little bugger would escape).

Last night I heard an odd mew (Spike squeaks, cries, and chirrups, but doesn't often miaow) outside my office door, and lo, there he was with a mouse in his mouth. he came in, dropped the mouse, spent a minute or so trying to worm it out of the corner while I tried to stop it going any further into the room. Because even tidy, this room has lots and lots of places a mouse could hide. And last night, it certainly wasn't tidy. Last night, it looked like this:

I am not a tidy person.

So I started trying to clear up some stuff, and I got lucky. Mice freeze motionless when frightened, and a giant human is pretty frightening to most mice. So I grabbed the bugger by the tail and dropped it out of the bathroom window (it's only a drop of about three feet, I saw it run away over the conservatory roof).

About an hour after I'd been in bed, I heard that strange miaow again, and with a cry of, "Spike, you little bastard," got out of bed to find he'd brought the mouse back in. This time, he lost it under the futon, which has so much stuff on it there's Christmas wrapping buried under there somewhere.

I gave up and went to bed. This morning, Spike was curled nonchalantly in the corner by the radiator, and if there was a mouse in the room it didn't seem to be bothering him. Of course, it could have gone anywhere in the night (I block this door open, because it doesn't shut properly from the outside, so Spike can always get in, but if it falls shut from the inside, he gets stuck, and starts destroying things).

So, today instead of working on the three or so stories I ought to be finishing, I'm putting my new Sony Walkman through its paces and tidying up. I may be gone some time.

Especially since Spike is determined to help:


14:11 ETA: Guess who I found? Curled up down by the shelves where I keep files and things (if it'd been the other shelves, where I keep books, I might not have cleared out the stuff in front, but I try to keep contract, statements etc. in some sort of order). One tiny mouse, curled in a terrified ball, not particularly happy to be picked up by his tail and carried downstairs. Yes, I know, but have you ever tried picking up a wild mouse around the body? Four sets of claws and one set of teeth, and I know I had a tetanus jab recently, but I'd still rather not test it).

Set the poor bugger out on the patio. Pepper desperately interested. Spike asleep on his chair in my office the whole time. Lazy little bastard.

But I swear, if that's the same damn mouse he keeps bringing in and I keep rescuing, then one day I'm just going to let him eat it, because damn, that thing's an evolutionary cul-de-sac.