Welcome to mice space
"Oh my God!" My girlfriend's shriek from the other room made me sit bolt upright. (I had been dangling deliciously above sleep, she had just swept home from a party.)
What on earth was it? Had she encountered the Holy Ghost on the landing? Had she discovered a human finger in the fridge?
Before I could speculate further, she was in the bedroom, slamming on the light and breathlessly announcing: "I have just seen a mouse!"
"A mouse?" I asked. "Is that all?" I was confused. Had I awoken to find myself living in some 1950s cartoon? What did she think the little beast was going to do? Frolic in her petticoats? I regard the mouse as a sort of elaborate moth; mildly annoying but essentially harmless. Certainly not worth shrieking and turning on the light over. "I will deal with this in the morning," I said, and rolled over.
We are not alone in our mouse problem as London seems to be in the grip of a miniature plague. Earlier this month, Newham General Hospital had to close a ward because of them. Oliver Peyton's restaurant Inn the Park recently suffered an embarras de souris. One was photographed in Asda in Lavender Hill; another was mistaken for an ambulant exhibit in Tate Modern. A straw poll of friends revealed most have had to deal with infestations.
Still, the fact that we were not alone did little to reassure my girlfriend; and when we returned home to find the rascals had demolished a loaf of bread, leaving a disturbing mound of crumbs on the worktop, even I began to take the matter seriously.
I went to our local hardware store, looking for traps. Having discovered the basic flaw of the "humane" version (it doesn't take a particularly clever mouse to realise it can simply walk back out) I invested in a traditional snapping device.
I was loath to slaughter them - Roald Dahl's The Witches has left a strong impression on me - but I needn't have worried. Having spent 40 finger-bruising minutes working out how to set the thing, I found that the mice simply pluck the raisin off the prong and leave the mechanism untripped. They take the Mickey.
We began reclaiming our territory by disinfecting everything, buying fresh flowers to mask the pong and inviting our friends in defiance. But still they pinch the raisins from the trap and still they leave their black droppings on the kitchen floor.
I intend to borrow a passing cat to set about them but if this doesn't work, we may surrender. Our jobs mean we spend most of our evenings out and little time at home. I worry that the mice have a better claim to our flat than we do.
How long before we return home to find them redecorating, hosting a drinks party or springing traps for the pair of us?
