Mouse About The House

So it turns out Pete and I are sharing our home with a mouse. Now I’m told that everything happens for a reason and I’m wondering if the mouse has one. Given he’s not really a threat to anything serious and is probably ever so cute, if he ever presented himself in person/rodent that is, I’m not particularly bothered.

He’s eaten through some curious things under the sink: one carrot and coriander soup carton, three dishwasher tablets and the best part of a Brita water filter and the scurrying in the roof above the bedroom of our loft conversion can keep us up at night. It’s also possible he left an unwanted gift in some leftover peas that Pete ate last week, resulting in a very upset tummy (for Pete, not the mouse). So common sense has reared its head and a humane trap must be sought. I really don’t want to kill it, it’s done nothing it shouldn’t and even if it had, death by trickery is surely a bit mean to say the least.

As with most domestic questions that arise in life, I turned to the internet to see what might be best. And also to find out if it’s likely our friend has any its own friends or relatives living with him. Apparently, if you remove a mouse as soon as you can, further invasion is less likely. If you leave it, then they set up home and suddenly there’s an extended family feasting on your soup cartons. Makes sense.

I also read a much more interesting forum post somewhere that claims playing Wagner to them, day and night, will drive them loony and send them packing. Experiments were carried out using feistier passages of Berlioz, Mahler and some angry bits of Beethoven, but Wagner yielded the most favourable efficacy. Call me bonkers, but I might actually give this a try. It didn’t tell exactly which pieces were used (should that be what Wagner works worked?) but the point is that it’s basically noisy, long and complicated. I’ll start with Das Rheingold I suppose and see how we go. If they’re still hanging about when we get to Götterdämmerung then we might be in trouble. But hopefully mice just aren’t into chromatic harmony.

I’ll have to report back with the results, but hopefully we’ll have the poor mouse evicted soon. I wonder how he’d react to Mozart’s Die Fledermaus? Oh my word, it’s just struck me! The mouse does have a reason – he’s been sent to improve my appreciation of Wagner.

Out