MICKEY MUSCULUS JOINS THE RODENT CONVENTION

No sign of Rattus since we (Georgio) laid the  bait boxes in the garden. That’s the good news.

The not so good news is that while the rat’s away, well… put it this way… tonight’s episode of Ben Fogle in the Scottish Isles was interrupted by my wife suddenly leaping onto an unopened box in the kitchen and pointing at the floor with a cry of “That’s a mouse!”

And it was. I just had time to see it bolt under the washing machine. A common brown house mouse, tail disappearing into the underside of the Fancy Samsung.

It’s not quite the same as it is in the cartoons. Neither of us shrieked. In fact we were both really calm (even though one of us was perched on a cardboard box). I stood there, transfixed for quite a while, half-expecting Mr Musculus to pop his tiny head back out for a twitchy sniff to see if the coast was clear. My brain was processing. I had an idea of what was coming next.

Two seconds of scurrying mouse led to a much longer, more extensive debate. Where had it come from? Was there more than one? Had we left any food out? Were there droppings somewhere? Who do we call? What do we do? 

That debate in turn led to two hours of unpacking, repacking, tidying, cleaning, washing hands, washing heads where hands had been, then dumping contaminated clothes into the laundry basket as though they were radioactive. And, perhaps most interestingly of all, taping a large amount of aluminium foil to the edges of the washing machine.

I was sceptical about that one, but I understood it.

In the end we went to bed exhausted from all the mouse-defence work. Every skirting board, every under-cupboard gap and pipe-hole was a potential portal for mice, and in my mind, a whole army of them were pouring and squeaking up from the floorboards.

“I had a friend who woke up with a rat sitting on her duvet once,” said Sammy, settling into the darkness.

“Let’s nip that in the bud right there,” I interrupted, knowing that that kind of thought would do neither of us any good at all. We were both exhausted and needed some well-earned sleep. I silently reflected that if I’d said that I might have got a soft punch in the arm. 

So, Mr Mickey Musculus. Thanks a lot; that’s another conversation with Georgio I hadn’t budgeted for. He’s going to wonder whether we’re not holding some sort of rodent convention.

I closed my eyes. You know, I might never find out what Ben Fogle made of the Shetland Isles.