A Mouse in the House

My husband is habituated to telling me that I can be, on occasion, incredibly brilliant and also incredibly stupid!

I once allowed the neighbour’s little son to decorate a rather prominent wall in our living room with his newly gifted ‘washable’ crayons. Needless to say, the crayons were definitely not washable and the resultant mural was rather less than Picasso-esque. Incredibly stupid? I guess so, though we did have rather a lot of fun! A subsequent monsoon caused extensive damage, requiring us to repair and paint the flat. The ‘mural’ is a long distant memory and the little boy is now a grown man with other talents to boast of.

Which brings me to the mouse. While I can murderously squash flies and mosquitoes, and scream the house down at the sight of a cockroach, I can ‘talk’ to the lizards and the mice with equanimity. A negligible gift, I agree, but one that can engender little doses of humour.

I was deep in a book while sitting with my back to the TV, when I heard a scrunching, whispering sound. The TV was off at the time and the book was so interesting that it took me a little while to realise that something was out of place. I glanced up and spotted a mouse. It was dragging strips of paper picked up from an open carton full of packing material, which was awaiting disposal, and tugging them into the back of the TV! Each trip involved hopping down from the unit, scampering across to the carton near the front door, grabbing a strip in its teeth, tugging it out of the tangle, climbing out of the carton and up to the television. I was fascinated.

I called out to my husband to ‘come and see’. The explosion was instantaneous, ‘Are you nuts?!!!!’ The television was a brand new acquisition and an expensive one (for us) at that - it had been purchased by hubby for viewing the forthcoming football World Cup in full colour. But the mouse was so cute: round, brown and furry with pink ears, nose and paw tips, bright boot-button eyes and whiskers aquiver. It was a storybook illustration come alive. Cuteness notwithstanding, the technician was summoned and the mouse dishoused. A mousetrap (the wire cage kind) ensured no further incursions.

But my husband is a gentle person. He walked many a mile, trap in hand, to release the mouse in a field far, far away where it hopefully found the right kind of home. He consoled me with the thought that it would have eventually fried inside the TV!