The Cornish Rambler

A Locked Room Mous-try*

Was about to venture out into town yesterday morning, when I was forestalled by Smudge depositing a mouse in the hallway. Possibly for the entertainment value of watching me spend the next half hour wedged under various bits of furniture trying to catch the little blighter. Eventually, having upended a sofa, taken all the books off a bottom shelf, pulled out all the tat under the sideboard and completely failed to grab it, I closed the door firmly against the cats and went out as originally planned.

Upon my return, discovered Smudge sitting staring fixedly at the fridge. Either she's found another one and released it in the house, possibly in an attempt to start a captive breeding programme, or mouse A has somehow squeezed under the shut door (a door with a fixed brush draught excluder thingy and a fitted carpet running underneath) in a moment of mad mouse deathwishery.

Smudge then spends the next four or five hours on guard by the fridge. Better than telly, I suppose. We eventually take everything off the top of the fridge, remove the spillable bits inside, and tip it sideways, only to see mouse tail disappearing up inside the workings like something out of a rodent version of Alien. So we pull the thing out further, tip it again, and the mouse makes a break for it. I corner him amongst the recycling and make a grab. Upon which the little sod bites me in the palm. Drop mouse. Swear at mouse. Mouse disappears behind oven (comedy visions of him then getting paws stuck in the appalling grease layer back there sadly unrealised). We pull oven out, he disppears under washing machine. Pull washing machine out, only to see him disappear into a hole under the sink unit where a pipe comes out. We've lost him, for the meantime. I guess he'll have to stay, until the day we come down to find Smudge has been victorious. Till then, I think I'll call him Klaus.**

* Doesn't really work that, does it?
** Klaus the house-mouse? No?

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