In the middle of the night...

[Betrisher]

Why me? Honestly? Why me????

See, I was sitting here at the computer whiling away a bit of time and hoping sleep would come soon (insomnia - again). Hearing a sound in the kitchen, I made an educated guess that one of the cats had brought in an item of wildlife, so I went to check that out. Yep! Sure enough, Genny had a dyspeptic-looking mouse and was trotting dutifully into the bathroom to process it! Eeuww, no!

I uttered a little sound and shooshed at Genny, who promptly and obediently turned and trotted back outside with her mouse safely in her clutches. Sighing and thinking 'Why me?' I turned back to my game and continued eliminating peasants. Having successfully quelled an uprising in my second-best village, I became aware of another funny little noise in the bathroom.

'What could that be?' I wondered to myself.

Hah! Miss Genny had snuck back inside again, bringing the misfortunate mouse and had managed to let it go in the bathroom. Since she was desperately climbing up the louvre door and scrabbling under my towel hanging thereupon, I assumed (correctly) that the mouse was somewhere within the folds of my very own personal bath towel.

Well. Sort of.

As I peeked around the edge of the door, I got eyeball-to-eyeball contact with the object of Genny's affections, who was clinging for dear life to the aforesaid bath towel! Uttering a little 'Eek!' of dismay, I pushed at the door, whereupon the mouse plummetted to the floor and Genny (who was by now precariously perched with her front feet on top of the left louvre and her hind feet on top of the right one) let out a yowl of dismay.

Those of you who know me will appreciate the spectacle of me doing a desperate pas de chat in my efforts to get my bare feet away from the ricocheting mouse. Genny, meanwhile, had descended to the floor in one graceful movement and had the mouse cornered (or should that be 'squared away'?) underneath the glass-topped bathroom scales. Last I saw of it, the poor creature was crouching under the scales looking directly into the gaping maw of Genevieve and (hopefully) passing away from the effects of a sudden coronary. For a brief moment, I picked up an empty tissue box thinking I could possibly avert the imminent slaughter. But then I thought better of it and have come back to the computer to record the incident while Genny does her grisly duty.

I have serious doubt that I will be getting any sleep this night...

 

[MomtoPercy]

ROFL!!!!! You tell an excellent story!! Poor mousie

Good luck getting some shuteye.

 

[Anansi]

Hahaha! Trish, you poor thing! And I concur, you do tell an excellent story! Pas de chat, eh? High comedy! (And knowing you as I do, probably a nod to the ironic with the literal French meaning. Cat step, indeed! Ha!)
Thank you for the good laugh! I most certainly needed it today!

 

[jenphilly]

How much work did you need to do to clean up the crime scene this morning???

too funny... great story

 

[Betrisher]

Oh, I haven't had to do any work cleaning up the scene, jenphilly! I never found the mouse. This means one of two things: Genny has fully processed it, or it's alive and well and domiciled somewhere inside my house. Either way, I find myself uneasy. :22_yikes:

 

[Betrisher]

Michelle, I never did get back to sleep. I kept thinking of the poor mouse and wondering at every little noise I heard. I do have a soft spot for mice, but Dark Mice are not welcome at my place!

Stephen, a pas de chat is a very specific step in ballet. It involves a vertical leap in which the bent knees are raised to the sides and the pointed feet are sort of rotated around each other before lightly touching down. Check it out on YouTube and you'll see that it was the most appropriate choice of step for my needs at the time.

 

[Anansi]

Oh, I know, Trish. And I quite enjoyed the picture you painted, believe me. I was just referring to the literal French origins where it would be translated as "cat step". Given the circumstances, I thought it fit rather nicely.

 

[RavensGryf]

Haha I always love your stories Trish... you should have been a writer

 

[Allee]

Great story, poor mouse! At least Genny cleaned up after her snack, or her clever prey escaped her, either way I can see how the whole thing might have prolonged your insomnia.

 

[crimson]

Trish, I chuckled the whole way thru that descriptive story, just think, if you were sleeping you would have missed the whole thing unfold...haha

 

[Betrisher]

Beth, I have to tell you this little story from long ago.

I was house-sitting for my parents. (They spent a year in Sydney while my Dad had treatment for throat cancer (laryngectomy) and then rehab). One night, I was fast asleep in my bed when I dreamed a flock of birds was tweeting outside my window. Waking groggily, I could still hear the tweeting.

Blearily, I switched on my bedside lamp and saw something I will never forget as long as I live. I promise you I wasn't dreaming! It was an entire colony of tiny wild mice, playing in the middle of the room! They were chasing each other in circles, jumping and squeaking and generally having the best time ever. They would chase each other's tails or chase their own tails and then squeak loudly if someone bit too hard. I just sat there, enchanted, while this spectacle went on. Eventually, the noise woke up my Matt, who came hurrying out to see what the noise was. He got to see the Mousie Carnival too (and this is how I know I wasn't dreaming! LOL!)

Of course, I couldn't allow a colony of mice to continue living in my parents' house rent-free, so I set about catching them and relocating them. I used Patricia's Proven Method for doing this. I tied a very long string to a milk bottle handle and ran it through a cuphook which I had screwed into the ceiling. I put a smear of peanut butter in the mouth of the bottle and some nice, smelly peanut butter toast in the bottom. Then, I waited, holding onto the other end of the string. The idea is to wait until Mousie is well inside the bottle and then you quickly pull the string so the bottle is jerked upright and Mousie is well-and-truly caught!

Over the course of ten days, I caught thirty-three little mice. Each morning, Matt would run down the bottom of the street and let them go in the drain. Each evening, I would sit up with my loaded trap and wait... and wait... and wait... Eventually, I caught no more little mice. My parents were horrified when I told them all this, but I'm not sorry. I felt privileged to see young animals playing and having fun. I also felt happy that I could move them along without having to kill them.

 

[TessieB]

Poor little mouse. But hey, nature is doing her thing.

 

[antoinette]

Poor mousie

The joys of having a cat LoL

I guess my time is coming soon

I love the way you tell a story Trish

You should have been an author

 

[getwozzy]

OMG!!!! I would've screamed like a little girl and ran away hahaha. Never mind the bathroom --I can hold it!!


When I was living at my mom's, one of the indoor/outdoor cats brought in a **very** live specimen and released it into the house well- my Siberian husky, Apollo, is a better mouser than the cats. He knew EXACTLY where that littler booger went- up inside the leg of the dining room table...so I tipped the table over, and after a while mr mousy dropped out-- and Apollo was more than happy to solve my mouse issue...DOWN THE MONSTERS THROAT IT WENT!! ....and off he trotted, happy at his catch...and probably happy I was done screaming and squealing LOL

 

[lisascannell]

Aww...I don't like mice, or rats. But my cat hunts mice too and I always feel so sorry for them, after all they are living creatures!! And people keep them as pets!!

 

[Betrisher]

Lisa, I used to be a mouse fancier in a former life. I bred fancy mice and specialised in Black Dutch and Belted varieties (although my favourite mouse ever was a little caramel Moo Cow doe called Angela) Mice make the best pets! They're incredibly clever and can learn tricks very easily as well as being able to sit in your pocket or parked on your ear or in your plait... Just perfect little companions! I like them better than rats because they have a gentleness and timidity that rats don't have. The only reason I don't still have lots and lots of pet mice is that they only live for two or three years at the most. It got far too hard on my son as each generation aged and died. So now, we have parrots which don't age quite so quickly!

PS. Back to the point: having kept mice as pets, I fully understand their hunger and cold and terror. I could never knowingly hurt one and that's why I catch the wild mice humanely and relocate them. If the cats come up with one, though, I don't take heroic rescue measures: after all, Nature is red in tooth and claw.

 

[critterman]

Poor mouse hope it got away.