Danger Mouse

TT was doing her washing on Saturday, when suddenly she cried out: “Ooh! A mouse. Jeez Jay, there’s a fricking mouse in here!” Notice the use of “ooh” rather than “aagh” She’s an Aussie girl and she was brought up in country. We keep a clean house and she knows that they’re not unexpected invaders. She doesn’t get easily panicked by such things as most girls would.

(Yes, my name is Jay, it’s getting too hard to type “Author of this blog” when all I do is talk about myself. Besides, who cares? If TT was to stumble across this blog it would be pretty bloody obvious it was written by me wouldn’t it?)

I went and dutifully looked for Mr Little. No luck of course. I asked her, jokingly, “Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it baby?” She was obviously pre-prepared for this and just pointed to the top of the fridge. Mouse poo. Six of. And a (she also pointed this out) small pool of wee on my passport, which for some reason I’ve left on there since I arrived.

I agreed to be immediately dispatched to buy mousetrap. I didn’t have a clue where to go, but luckily Australian houses are obviously so mouse infested that all supermarkets stock them. I noticed to my disgust that they come in packs of two. I told the cashier that to the best of my knowledge, (justified by only six poos on the fridge), we only had one mouse, and wondered if I could get a discount on a split pack.

She just looked at me odd as so many Australians do and made me buy the whole two. “Still, half the time to catch him now” I thought to myself as I sauntered away from the store.

Learning to set a mousetrap was interesting. TT could do it no worries. I nearly broke my little finger 3 times. But at least it was only nearly.

The first bait we tried was bread. We checked half an hour later and it was gone. No dead mouse. So we when tried securing small pieces of bread with cable ties (well, actually those things you are supposed to close freezer bags with, but who’s checking?!)

No good. Bait gone, cable-tie gone.

I then tried a cunning manoeuvre: Instead of putting the bait on the platform I put it on the trigger release. Did it work? Did it fuck. Gone in ten mins.

We tried, both on platform and trigger, shepherds pie, chicken pie, bacon rind, apricot jam, bread, pate, sweet corn and apple pieces. He just ran off with the whole fucking lot. I decided I had two options left:

a) Put down only high cholesterol foods and wait for the bastard to die of coronary disease
b) Be a bit more cunning about the whole thing

So, in lieu of high cholesterol foods I decided to be more cunning and make the trigger more delicate. I used candle wax to stick together a small raft of four matches. I then made this into a ramp leading up to the trap.

Yes. I really did this.

My logic was thus: Leverage + gravity + stuff = heavier mouse. Therefore, Heavy mouse + trap = SNAP! Which therefore can be reduced to Jay=Winner, Mouse=Snapped. I’m great at physics/maths….The matches raft/lever didn’t work.

I then modified this idea and made a small bridge between the two traps made of stale bread. He ate my fucking bridge. See what a bastard I’m dealing with here?

So, I then decided to dress up like the dryer and stand next to washing machine and point a gun at the floor.

As he was showing all signs of eating us out of house and home I decided that perhaps his little mousey body wouldn’t be able to put up with alcohol. So, how do we take that to extremes? Aaah. Vodka soaked bread crust. I was against the poison idea since poison just makes mouse go away and die somewhere and create obnoxious body-rotting smells. I soaked some bread in vodka (just cheap shit, no Smirnoff for this bastard) and set that on the trap.

By this point he was so used to coming and eating the bait I almost expected him to be sat there with his little mousey knives and forks, banging them on our floor in a “Why are we waiting…?” kind of protest, the kinds of which I used to partake in at school.

Fortunately, for him, he wasn’t waiting, although he had left a small napkin and a tip. Metaphorical. Unless you count mouse turds as a tip - ie., You're from Eastern Europe...