Visitor

[tinyjo]

So, while tidying the kitchen this morning, I heard what I thought was a rustling sound coming from the fridge. I gave it a suspicious stare, but decided that it was just things settling inside as I had just rearranged it. However, when Charlie started taking an indecent amount of interest in the gap down the side it was time to reconsider and staring fixedly down the side showed a little mouse dashing across.

For this, I blame Cassie as she used to bring live mice in a lot more frequently than dead ones so I should have guessed that she would have managed to do it a time or two here. Usually she keeps hold of them and brings them right over to me, possibly hoping to train me to hunt, but I guess this time she must have become distracted and dropped the damn thing in the kitchen.

So. Our fridge is rather inconveniently positioned for this sort of thing. As you come into the kitchen, on your right is a recess - effectively the space under the stairs - and it's here that our fridge resides. So far, so awkward. We decided to pull it out in an attempt to capture the beast. Unfortunately, since then I have put a shelf up in the kitchen along the wall next to the alcove. Above the hight of the fridge of course but what I hadn't taken into account were the brackets, one of which is positioned so that it's not actually possible to pull the fridge out. Curses. If only I'd thought of that at the time!

It is at this point, with the fridge as far forward as possible, that Alex decides that he will wriggle over the top of it and see if he can see the mouse.



Unfortunatly, despite a lot of alarming wiggling about, he can't so he decides to go all the way over and hopefully scare the thing into my waiting clutches.



Unfortunately we have no luck with this either. The mouse is either very good at hiding or has managed to sneak out past my scrutiny into another part of the kitchen. Of course now Alex has to get back out...



The upshot of it all is that
(a) we have a mouse in our kitchen
(b) the fridge still appears to be working and has now been pushed right back into the alcove to allow the cats enough of a gap to hunt in the area (I'm pretty much betting on them chasing it out where I can get at it)
(c) I need a humane mousetrap and
(d) we have finally found Ruth's missing D12, which had been chased under the fridge by the cats in times past, apparently. There's also the big D20 and a pink D20 under there but we couldn't get at them.

Comments

[andyluke.livejournal.com]

haha ! That alex one is well slim !

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I know - he's a skinny bugger, isn't he!

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

By "humane mousetrap", I assume you mean one which would allow the mouse to remain alive. What would you do with the mouse once you caught it?

Anyway, amusing pictures!

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Let it out over the fence into the huge garden of our rear neighbour - that should give it at least a reasonable chance of escaping the cats :)

[jinty]

you need to leave mice at least a mile or two away - otherwise they will just come right back to their old stomping grounds (ie your kitchen).

I can lend you a non-humane mousetrap if you change your mind, or instruct you in the construction of a humane one out of a pyrex dish, tray, cocktail stick and bamboo skewer...

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

My guess is that it's actual stomping ground is the garden from where it has been brought inside by Cassie - she does have a track record of releasing the things into the kitchen. I suppose she sees it as her larder :)

[shepline.livejournal.com]

Hehe! Those pictures would make fantastic userpics for oxfordslacker! Particularly the second one! ;-)

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

This vegan of twenty-six years says:
What you need is a whippet. (*) Because they don't carry mice about (live or dead). Hoooooo nonononono. They catch 'em, they eat 'em (whole), and you know absolutely nothing about it unless you catch 'em in the act. Marvellous, bloody marvellous.
Since the whippet passed away (the greyhounds are NBG) we've had a couple of intrusions. We got some poison from B&Q - always successfully, but with varying degrees of aftereffects viz: one dead mouse in the middle of the garage floor (ick), another time one dead mouse (we suspect) under the utility room floor (we'd spent a couple of hundred quid sorting that floor out so we were bloody well going to tough it out and let the little sod stay there and rot), but at best it's whippet-like success in that the problem just... stops.

(*) By which I don't mean you personally. The cats would beat it up... :)

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

The good thing about whippets is that you have 'plausible deniability'. Just as the President of the US does not say 'I want this guy overthrown', the CIA intuits it and gets on with it, so the whippet just goes for a little walk and returns with an expression which says 'move along, nothing to see here'.

[applez.livejournal.com]

But don't you have have to be a Yorkshireman to have a Whippet, and not feel, well, a bit silly?

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

There are whippets down south. It has to be said that when we took t'whippet oop North, she was recognised as a whippet whereas lots of people down here didn't know what she was.

Thanks!

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

Definitely caption-competition or speech-balloon material: *wonderful* pictures. I particularly like No. 3.

Um. Mice. Um. The council might put in a humane trap for you - pest control is Something They Do.

Re: Thanks!

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I think one mouse we can manage :) My main worry was that the cats would get it again before we could release it into the wild!

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

The Fridge Hungers for Dice!

[applez.livejournal.com]

Clearly your fridge doubles as some sort of probabilistic machine - it is patiently gathering the appropriate components. ;-)