The Moose Loose Aboot Ma Hoose

Four of the blighters now, actually.

Shambled downstairs this morning, and cussed myself for not closing the living room door before I went to bed last night: that's where I've found the 3 dead mice this past week.

About ten days ago while watching TV just after midnight I thought I saw something move in a corner of the room; something mouse sized. The next day I purchased some mouse traps and a packet of mouse poison from the local hardware store. I decided to use the poison as I came close to severing several fingers trying to set the damn traps. So five little trays with the poison distributed along the walls, in corners, behind furniture as instructed.

Next morning, bingo, two dead mice lying on the living room carpet. This big Jessy nearly jumped onto the nearest chair. My god, the adrenaline was coursing through my wherever adrenaline courses through, as if I was a WW1 Tommy going over the top for the first time. Getting a grip on my inner wuss I brushed the corpses into a bucket and disposed of them in some nearby waste ground. Not my garden, though by the aforementioned terrain description it could well have been.

The next morning I found another dead mouse expired under a chair after helping itself to my toxic offerings. I understand why they found the living room such rich foraging ground. My elderly mother eats all her meals and snacks from the comfy chair she installs herself into every morning, and she deposits a generous scattering of crumbs onto the carpet round her. And (holding my guilty hand up here) I haven't been as diligent as I should have been lately with the hoovering up of said crumbs. Ergo rich foraging ground for mice.

The following five days were mice free days. Before retiring to bed I would remove any food from the living room (bread sticks, prawn crackers, dates, and grapes being typical fare) and close the living room door to contain any further foragers within the killing ground.

Yesterday I left the living room door wide open. So this morning, having routinely searched for dead mice and found nothing I set the table for breakfast, made myself some cereal and a mug of tea, and settled down in front of my computer (which is in the dining room), and as I adjusted my feet under my seat I felt something lumpy, looked down, and leaped off my seat at the discovery of the fourth mouse. The feeling of terror-driven repulsion lasted no more than a few seconds this time. I am becoming a hardened veteran, I tell myself, and soon won't even bat the proverbial eyelid at a dead mouse find.

An Imaginary Island

While I was creating this island with the Terragen landscape generating program I was reminded of my schooldays; and in particular Miss Broadbottom's history class.

While she would be droning on about the Kings and Queens of England, I would be lost in my latest buccaneering fantasy, busily sketching another imaginary island in my jotter. It was her wont to frequently waddle up and down the aisles between pupils' desks checking that her words were being diligently recorded when, on more than one occasion, she would stop mid drone. Thirty or more bored heads, eagerly seeking distraction, would turn towards where she had stopped; behind my desk. Her remonstration at my inattention was both swift and dismissive: a corrective slap across the back of the head accompanied by a shrill cry of "Fiddlesticks". I'm quite sure this was the strongest expletive she could find in her vocabulary. She would then allow the stifled sniggers to subside before she waddled on to continue with her monotonous listing of the succession of monarchs.

Of course, Broadbottom wasn't her real name. It was probably something forgettable like Jones or Brown. Although it is fair to say that, to put it in nautical terms, there was a fair distance between her port and starboard extremities.

Now that's a shaggy parrot story, if ever I heard one.

You can see the full size image here at my Flickr webpage.