Mouse Hunt

If you remember there’s a cute little kids song entitled A Windmill in Old Amsterdam which goes like this:

I saw a mouse!
Where?
There on the stair!
Where on the stair?
Right there!
A little mouse with clogs on
Well I declare!
Going clip-clippety-clop on the stair
Oh yeah

I am up early as usual. I haven’t slept more than 6 hours a night in weeks. Today the alarm call is A shouting from her bedroom that she’s scared. It’s 6.15 am. This is becoming a daily occurence and also wakes up her brother so it’s a perfect start to a dark winter weekend. I’ve given up on decent parenting decisions at this hour of the morning so I’m letting them watch Charlie and Lola while shoveling in the rice crispies and I’m nodding off with my nose dipped in a cold cup of tea. I keep hearing a sort of rustling noise coming from the corner of the room. I ignore it for a very long time and just keep my eyes shut. It’s probably one of the various drawings and bits of paper falling off the wall.

We’re down on the floor now killing time doing puzzles until the day begins for the rest of the world. Eventually I decide I better go and investigate. In the corner I remove a hobby-horse and a toy pram to reveal a bag with books in it. Under the bag I find some mouse droppings and something wet, which from it’s smell must be wee. A small plastic dinosaur and some magnetic letters are lying in the pool of wee. I consider throwing them out and then chuck them in the sink with some detergent. I don’t know what specific kind of detergent it is, just the nearest thing I find in a yellow bottle. I then use the same stuff on a load of kitchen paper and wipe the floor. Weird. There also seems to be some red blodges on the floor. Maybe the cat has killed a mouse and it’s wet itself in fright?

Ok, back to the puzzles, but I can still hear something. I pull A’s toy oven away from the wall but there’s just some pen lids and a cherry tomato under there. Then I pull a cupboard from the wall and a tiny grey streak zooms between my legs and out the living room door.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH” I am shrieking.

“CALL DADDY!!!! I NEED HIS HELP!”

“DAAAAAAAAADDY” calls A up the stairs.

He comes in half asleep looking bewildered “What? What is it? What’s happening in here?”

“A MOUSE” I shout

“God, do you need to be so melodramatic! I thought someone had been murdered!” says P

“Sorry, it’s just a mouse, I didn’t mean to scare you” I’m saying to A who looks worried.

“It’s just because it ran so fast under my feet, it made me jump.”

“Ok, can we all just calm down in here” says P

P closes the door to the living room and chases the mouse around the hallway with a pink bucket until it seeks refuge in the toilet.

“Can you get me a box?.. quick” he asks

I root through the recycling and find a bent bit of cardboard that once was a box. P has barricaded the toilet doorway with some magazines and an air freshener.

He is poised at the door with the bucket. It looks like he has come up with a mouse trapping system, so I leave him to it.

“Pixie” A runs at the cat and closes the door. “I don’t want her to get the mouse.”

I babble on about nature and hunting and predators for a while.

A climbs up on the coffee table.

“I’m a hunter” she’s saying “I’m not scared of anything”

Outside the door I can hear some movement and P calls me to open the front door.

“I’ve got it” he says

He carries the pink bucket and the cardboard outside to the pavement. He opens the bucket.

“What? There’s nothing in here! I really thought I had it.”

I find the mouse burrowing down next to the drain pipe in the toilet. I can see it’s furry back writhing about trying to wriggle under the linoleum.

We put the cardboard barricade back in place and watch, but there’s no way to get at it now.

“Forget it, I’m going to have a lie down” I say

An hour later I come back downstairs. P is in the living room. Kids are still in their pyjamas having a great time making whizz, boink, klaxon comedy noises on daddy’s computerised piano. Everyone seems to have forgotten about the mouse invader.

Except me.

After a lie down and a renewed sense of purpose I’m on task, ready for the hunt. The mouse is still there in the toilet. There’s a lot of tiny black pellets on the floor. It’s nasty long tail is flipping about from the hole under the drain pipe.

I pick up the pink bucket and freeze.

He pokes his nose out.

I wait.

I lose sight of him for a second, then suddenly he’s there under the radiator.

I put the bucket down.

I poke at him with an empty toilet roll tube.

He scuttles into the bucket to hide.

I grab the cardboard and try to place it over the opening on the bucket, but he darts out before I make it and the barrier is down so he runs out the doorway of the toilet and towards the coats.

“AAAAHHH! NO!” I shout and I’m clenching my fists and looking around for him everywhere.

“NO!!!!!!! I’ve messed up the system!”

P is at the living room door. “What’s wrong? what’s wrong?” he’s asking.

But I’m beyond help.

“I HAVE TO GET THIS MOUSE!” I’m shouting “I CAN’T FIND HIM!”

I’ve croached down on the floor and I’m starting to cry. I throw a walking boot in the direction of the shoe rack. The mouse runs between the shoes. He’s under a welly. I close the sliding door in the porch and open the front door. I pull the shoe rack away from the wall and find a mass of cobwebs. The mouse isn’t there! He’s already shot across to the other side, under the kids coats. I’m getting hysterical, groaning and flapping at him with the cardboard trying to usher him out the front door.

P opens the living room door and looks at me.

“Can you just be normal?”

“NO!” I snap back

The mouse runs back the other way under my legs and squeezes himself through a 2cm gap in the sliding door and back into the house.

“AAAAAHHHHHHH……He’s on the stairs! Help! He’s going upstairs!!!!!!”

I run at the staircase with the pink bucket and somehow I manage to interrupt one of his mouse hops. I fling the bucket down onto his head.

“RAAAAHHHHHHH!”

He runs in the other direction, jumps over the 2 potties and the toilet brush and he’s back in the porch between the walking boot and the umbrellas. I lunge at him with the bucket in one hand and the cardboard in the other and suddenly I seem to have scooped him up and he’s made a dash for it out the open front door. I see him running over the flower bed and through a gap in the wall.

I stand there holding the cardboard like a shield for a moment and then slam the door shut.

When I go back into the living room I am triumphant, but I feel a bit strange.

“I got him out!” I announce and I’m kind of laughing with a weird squeaky wheezing noise.

The cat is asleep on a chair.

“Well done” says P.

“Are you Ok? It sounded like you were having a nervous breakdown.”