I Can Be Trained

Nice shade of blue, isn't it?

Movement!  I'm sure I saw something.  It was just out of the corner of my eye.  It moved.

I had been talking to a friend in our kitchen.  He was seated at the breakfast bar which is at a floor to ceiling window and I had just seen something move on the deck outside.

It was huge, furry, grey and had a long hairless tail.

Ok, maybe 'huge' is the wrong word.  It was a mouse, but I HATE mice!  I hate rats too, but fortunately, I've only ever met one rat and it had a cage.  Mice on the other hand, I've met many times and it has never been a happy occasion.

Unlike Daughter No.1, who once found a damaged but still alive mouse in a cup in the gutter on her way home from school and who brought it home and nursed it back to a pet, I don't think mice are cute.  And, before you ask, no, I don't know, where we went wrong with Daughter No.1.
Mice are dirty, smelly, nasty creatures that make a mess, help themselves to your food without permission or a thank you and always turn up in places for maximum embarrassment, like in the middle of a dinner party.  Besides, didn't they spread the Black Plague that wiped out thousands of Londoners in the Middle Ages?  OK, that may have been rats, but they're all the same and none deserve to live in my apartment.

Oh, and then there's that spooky ghost thing mice do.  That bugs me too.  You know, the thing where they scamper so fast that you're not quite sure that you saw something.  Sometimes it's not until days later that a gnawed packet, nest or worse - droppings are found to confirm that you weren't just imagining their ghostly blur.

This particular mouse didn't do 'ghost' well, though.  It had run half way along the deck and stopped and then ran the other way- maybe it saw me jump - or scream.  Well, it wasn't really a scream, more a muffled screech.  Whatever it was, it was enough for Rob in the other room to follow up.

I said, "It's a mouse!"  Rob came into the kitchen and proclaimed that it wasn't.  "Where?  It can't be.  How could it get up here?" he asked.  He had a point, we do live several floors above the street, but fortunately this time I had a witness.

My friend, who must have realised that the little bugger was on the other side of the glass, because he hadn't reacted at all, vouched for me.  He told Rob that there had indeed been a mouse out there and held his hands in front of him to show that it had been about so big.  Yep, that was my recollection too - about the size of a small dog.  Sighting confirmed.

Considering that it's summer in London, I was concerned it would get in.  I mean, if the little bugger can climb up walls to set up house on or under our deck, there was no way I was going to be opening windows or doors in the heat of the afternoon.  "It's gotta go," I said in my best mad scientist voice while gleefully rubbing my hands together.

I said that I hate mice.  I didn't say they scare me - well maybe just a little.  In any case, in my opinion the only good mouse is a dead mouse.  And, as my friend and former flatmate, Michelle, will confirm I get a little gleeful about knocking the little buggers off.  When we flatted together, I knocked off a whole family of mice who had decided to make my Maggi Noodles their sole food source - one trap, ten mice in about five days.  That's what success feels like.

The next day, I was going to pick up a trap at the supermarket.  As it turned out, the supermarket didn't sell them and because my Mother is visiting I didn't have a chance to look further a field.  And, since it was raining, the doors and windows shut policy didn't cause much concern.

The next day, I went down to the building manager and asked if he had any poison I could use.  He didn't, but he told me that there were lots of vermin in the basement and that a pest control company comes around each month to lay bait and check the traps.  This wasn't as reassuring as I think he meant it to be.

He suggested that if I wanted to buy something myself I could go to the hardware store around the corner.  I've lived here a month now, but had never seen that shop.  But apparently, it was just around the corner - a minute away.  So, off I went.  And, sure enough, there was a hardware store just around the corner.  Who knew?

Westminster Shop Window Notice

I went in and asked where I could find mouse traps.  The man took me to the aisle with "all the mouse stuff".  And, boy, what a selection it was.  They had all the execution methods that ever were.  Clearly, it wasn't just abandoned shops, our building's basement  and our deck that had a vermin problem.

The shop had several different types of poison and eight or nine types of traps.  They also had those pads of sticky stuff that the poor little buggers get stuck on and starve to death, but that seemed too cruel even for me.

There was one trap that was catch and release.  What the hell would I do with that?  It would surely make Daughter No.1 happy, but I don't want the little bugger returning home after a few days on holiday in the park.

I settled on some poison bait and an old fashioned spring trap with a wood base.  The brand name of the latter was "Little Nipper" which seemed a bit of an understatement, but I guess it makes some people feel better about its function.

I went home.  I laid the poison bait first.  Next I prepared the Little Nipper.  It had a little spike for cheese, but I've always found that peanut butter works best.  It's harder to pull it off without losing their heads.  I put it outside between two flower pots and we went out to dinner.

We came home.  I walked in the door.  I checked the trap.  Bingo!  Success.  Got him.  I yelled the same, which brought the others to rubberneck at the body in the trap.  Rob asked what 'I' was going to do now, suspecting he was going to be on clean up.  I said I was going to leave it there as a message to the rest of them.

Mouse trap with foiled bait

However, just before going to bed, it hit me that if there were more mice, it was probably wiser to reset the trap than send a message.  So, into the rubbish the little body went and the trap was reset.

This morning Rob asked if I'd got another one.  I checked.  The peanut butter was still there.  "Great. We can open the windows and doors again," I said.  But then, was ALL the peanut butter still there?  I wasn't sure.  A couple of hours ago, all the peanut butter was gone and there was no body.  It could be that I sent the wrong message by leaving a body in the trap for a few hours last night.

Now, not wanting to be outsmarted by an inferior species, I reset the trap with a blueberry on the spike and glued it down with peanut butter.  But, this new mouse is smarter than the average human.  It ate the peanut butter leaving a clean berry behind.  So, I just tried again with no blueberry and a bread and peanut butter mix.  I guess, if he continues training me right, this one might actually turn out to be the size of a small dog.