Yes, we have mice in the attic. Makes a change from bats in the belfry I suppose*. And not just any sort of mice – we have cunning mice. The little bastards have been waking me up in the wee small hours, having their damn mouse parties in the roof-space above our bedroom. Scuffling and squeaking away. Probably eating our bloody Christmas decorations. Come the end of the year we’ll unpack our trees and baubles and they’ll be half chewed. Dirty little rodent swines.
In order to curb their gastronomic vandalism I’ve been putting a humane trap up in the loft for the last couple of nights, hoping to lure them inside so that I may dispose of them far, far away. Or feed them to Little Miss** Anyway, these humane trap is basically a little rectangular tube that has a little kick up at the end. At the end of this ‘kick’ is a little lid where you put a smear of peanut butter. At the other end there’s a flip-up door thing that has teeny locking plastic bittes on it.
The idea is that Mr (or Mrs) Mouse smells the peanut butter, thinks ‘Oh-ho, not had peanut butter for a while – being that it doesn’t occur naturally in nature, or in people’s attics – think I’ll just pop into this innocuous looking plastic tube thing.’ And in he pops. To get to the peanut butter he has to climb up the little ‘kick’ at the end of the tube, and his (or her) weight is just enough to tip the thing and cause the door he came in to snick closed. Mr (or Mrs) mouse eats the peanut butter and in the morning along you come along and evict him from your property. Or batter and deep-fry him, depending on your national leanings.
The only trouble is that every time I go up into the attic I see the trap’s been sprung. Hurrah! And then find that there’s no bloody mouse in there. Not Hurrah. The trap is a mouse-free zone. Nada on the mouse front. The little buggers are just setting it off to play with me – evil mouse-flavoured mind games from the rodents in the attic.
Well, it’s either that or they’re too damn stupid to figure out you have to go INTO the trap to get to the peanut butter.
So why don’t we set the CAT OF DOOM loose in the loft to hunt them down like little furry dogs? … Emm … Good question. For some reason I don’t like the thought of Grendel running amuck in the roof space. Don’t know why, I just don’t. Maybe I just don’t want her eating the Christmas decorations too?
* Though She Who Must Be Watched Like A Hawk If There’s Chocolate On The Go still has more than a few.
** But for some reason Fiona is strangely averse to that. Methinks it’s because it’s more fun for Grendel to catch and eat outside mice, rather than being fed inside ones. I tell her: I say, “Just because the mice live inside, it doesn’t make them pets!”