Picture from The Guardian
Our peace was shattered last night when there was a scratching at the front door. This is our cats way of informing us that they want to come inside from whatever adventures they have been out enjoying. Peanut wanted to come in as we were switching off the television and the lights before going to bed, so I opened the front door and let her in. We live in a Victorian terrace and the front door opens straight into the living room, which is where Peanut crouched down with her paw over something. On closer inspection it turned out to be a mouse, only a little field mouse thankfully, and not a we've got mice mouse. Even so I wanted it gone, luckily she appeared to be clinging on to a dead mouse so I called to Mandi to fetch two carrier bags so I could pick it up and put it in the wheelie bin, why I felt the need for two bags when I only use one to pick up dog shit is a mystery but it felt right at the time as I didn't have a great deal of thinking time.
The bags turned out to be useless anyway because the mouse was very much the opposite of a dead mouse and escaped Peanut's clutches and seemed to stop half under the sofa, the second part of my clever plan was about to enter my brain, and I called Mandi again to pas me the vacuum cleaner. I figured that the mouse was small enough to be sucked up using the attachment after which I would empty the whole lot in the wheelie bin as we have a well known brand of bag-less vacuum cleaner. What I had spectacularly failed to realise is that the mouse would run off at the first hint of bother, and of course the other factor that I forgot about is that Peanut is shit-scared of the vacuum cleaner and ran as fast as she could upstairs, leaving me in a room with a mouse.
Having got rid of the vacuum cleaner and retrieved Peanut it was time for another plan. The mouse was now underneath the cabinet thing that holds the television, DVD player, Freeview box and stuff so I called Jack. Patterdale terriers are renowned hunters of vermin, even adopting a type of SAS crawl that enables them to creep up on rats and squirrels so a tiny mouse should be a piece of cake to him. Jack wandered into the room and got into his little bed despite me telling him he had work to do. The final plan was to remove Jack from the room and grab both of my cats and shut them in the front room, losing all sense by this point I told them both that whoever catches the mouse would be rewarded with a full bowl of milk. I left them for two hours while I did some work in my office and tentatively walked back into the front room being careful to close the door behind me, because mice can't walk underneath doors of course. Peanut was curled up on the sofa looking admittedly very cute and cuddly and Kevina was sitting on the windowsill cleaning herself. As the mouse was nowhere to be seen I assumed it had escaped through a gap of some description so I opened the front door and had a cigarette on the front step. On returning I turned off the front room light and opened the door into the dining room to discover the mouse by my feet following me in as if I was an estate agent showing it round, as far as I was concerned this intruder was just taking the piss so I picked up Peanut, (who I considered responsible for this in the first place) and tried to get her interested in finishing what she had started. By now the mouse was under the small sofa in the dining room and I pulled it away from the wall and Peanut was immediately on the prowl, diving behind the sofa and making a noise that sounded like a fight between a cat and a mouse, I half expected the mouse to come walking out dusting itself off and Peanut on her back with stars spinning round her head as if in some kind of cartoon in which a cat chases a mouse that constantly outsmarts it, (I'm writing that idea down because I think it has legs) but a high pitched squeak indicated that Peanut had won. So pleased was she with her catch that she ran up two flights of stairs into my office to dump it up there, as if I don't have enough stuff hoarded up there, and she wasn't going to let it go.
Eventually I managed to grab the dead mouse (with two carrier bags over my hand) and ran downstairs and finally got to put something in the wheelie bin before washing my hands. The sad thing is that I can't tell Peanut off for this because I don't want her to think she is wrong as one day we might need her to remove a mouse rather than bring one in, after all this is nature and if she was a lion I would have to cope with dead antelopes in my office, which would require three carrier bags.
The Sunday Alternative #52 is available from here.
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August housekeeping
We are now in the eighth month of the year and at a standstill as far as work is concerned. In unrelated news, it is my birthday on the 27th of this month so a nice present would be a donation using the PayPal button. This would be spent on creating podcasts, documentaries, short films, comedy sketches and various other entertainments that I will make available to enjoy online for free.
The above t-shirt and bag is also available to buy, all the money goes to the same creative fund. They are on my shop page.
I'll play you a kazoo song request, find out how here.
Letter of complaint written for you for £2, here.
steveEoliver@gmail.com
