Houston, we have a mouse.
The signs were there early on – there was that one morning I woke up and found the garbage bag I’d put on the floor had been chewed through – but the critters were nowhere to be seen. One day I discovered they’d crawled into my bag overnight and nibbled through a corner of 65 percent Lindt. I must have shaken my fist at the sky, at that great mouse in the sky.
Because the mouse has yet to eat through a bag of Olive’s Haribo, Mr Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité thinks it is cute. “The mouse is cute,” he says. “It’s small.” Small? Small for what, mister? An anteater? Small is what mice do for a living – they encourage smallness. They cultivate smallness. When they sign up for duty, the list of requirements (itself petite) says: 1. Be small. 2. Squeak.
“It is not cute,” I say. “And do you know what is small?” I say. “Disease carried on the backs of mice,” I say, “is small.” Olive says, “Look, he is not ‘it’, OK, he has a name.” “He has a soul,” he says. “His name,” he once declared, “is Moses.”
Very late one night, finally, as I sat at the kitchen table, the mouse poked his nose round the side of the fridge and looked at me. I looked back, making my eyes as big as cats and thinking flaming claws shooting out of them. The mouse squeaked mouse warnings to his no-good hooligan mouse associates, and there was a scuttering and a scrabbling against the wall.
The mousetraps in the Turkish off-licence are called “Little Nipper” but I cannot buy them because mice is one thing but dead mice is another. My devious plan, colour me cunning, is to remember to keep any bag containing food off the floor. Still, I am aware that I am but a pawn in this game. Yesterday, as I grated some grana padano for a pesto, it was clear to me that each little cheesy fleck that fell upon the kitchen floor was another neon sign flickering “Vacancy” to the mice. “Come on in,” I might as well say, and I could stick out a finger to take their hats and furs, “the cheese is fine.”
The signs were there early on – there was that one morning I woke up and found the garbage bag I’d put on the floor had been chewed through – but the critters were nowhere to be seen. One day I discovered they’d crawled into my bag overnight and nibbled through a corner of 65 percent Lindt. I must have shaken my fist at the sky, at that great mouse in the sky.
Because the mouse has yet to eat through a bag of Olive’s Haribo, Mr Liberté-Égalité-Fraternité thinks it is cute. “The mouse is cute,” he says. “It’s small.” Small? Small for what, mister? An anteater? Small is what mice do for a living – they encourage smallness. They cultivate smallness. When they sign up for duty, the list of requirements (itself petite) says: 1. Be small. 2. Squeak.
“It is not cute,” I say. “And do you know what is small?” I say. “Disease carried on the backs of mice,” I say, “is small.” Olive says, “Look, he is not ‘it’, OK, he has a name.” “He has a soul,” he says. “His name,” he once declared, “is Moses.”
Very late one night, finally, as I sat at the kitchen table, the mouse poked his nose round the side of the fridge and looked at me. I looked back, making my eyes as big as cats and thinking flaming claws shooting out of them. The mouse squeaked mouse warnings to his no-good hooligan mouse associates, and there was a scuttering and a scrabbling against the wall.
The mousetraps in the Turkish off-licence are called “Little Nipper” but I cannot buy them because mice is one thing but dead mice is another. My devious plan, colour me cunning, is to remember to keep any bag containing food off the floor. Still, I am aware that I am but a pawn in this game. Yesterday, as I grated some grana padano for a pesto, it was clear to me that each little cheesy fleck that fell upon the kitchen floor was another neon sign flickering “Vacancy” to the mice. “Come on in,” I might as well say, and I could stick out a finger to take their hats and furs, “the cheese is fine.”
posted by stellou at 10:34 AM
5 Comments:
HAHAHA. you grated cheese for the pest. o.
o, how i am stumped by this green cake.
i do not know how to bloggit.
Oh dear.
Perhaps I've told you this story, but I once had a serious mouse infestation—cute little furry idiots wandering into the middle of my living room and looking at me like, "What are you doing here?"—and a live-in boyfriend who felt that every creature had a soul and killing was sinful, etc.
Yeah.
He buried my first victim in Carroll Park, and he would periodically go visit and talk to it.
But after about my sixth—maybe it was when I caught two teensy dumb mice in the same trap, as they reached for the peanut butter simultaneously—even Nature Boy admitted that we had a Mouse Problem.
It turned out there were six more after that. It took me eight days to murder them all.
So, what I'm saying is, if you've got one, and they're coming out and looking at you when you've got the lights on and are acting like a human, you've probably got a litter. And a litter is definitely a Mouse Problem.
(Just don't deal with it the way the boy does in Popular Music in Vittula.)
cc > FUNNY MEH?? Eh you come and hang out with the mice then we shall see how many more furry jokes you have up your sleeve.
bbrug > Well. Crap. I guess I figured I had a Mouse Problem, but I was hoping, I dunno, that we could all just get along. That BBC article about the trail of mouse urine, though -- I don't know how I could keep up a relationship with someone who trailed urine behind them everywhere they went.
I don't remember the mice in Vittula!! Man, editing that book sure seems like a long time ago now. Was it drowning? Was it burning? Urgh. I would like to escape with having to do neither.
It involves both drowning and burning. Mostly burning. And it's quite revolting. Remember? He gets paid by the tail.
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