of mice and men

 

What can you say about a mouse who loved Bach and the Beetles and parrots and Jack Russells and sheepdogs and scuttling across the floor when I was kneeling in front of the Divine Mercy image and chewing up the  internal workings of the piano and scrabbling inside of armchairs particularly when I was snoozing in them and me?

Mousekin moved into the house a few days before Christmas.

He didn't exactly become part of the furnture although at various times he inhabited all of it.

He was a mouse of simple pleasures.

Nothing pleased him more than the anti mouse sonic device we plugged in in early January.

It was like he was listening to a Chris De Burgh record.

One of the easy listening good ones.

Satin Green Shutters.

Not Don't Pay The Nanny.

The gentle purple glow from the device added a psychedelic flavour to his forays between the brass box and his beloved piano.

The implication that the device was anti mouse bothered him not one whit.

He was a mouse secure in his mousehood and took nothing personally.

We fed him more than once.

Twice actually.

I left him down a dinner on Christmas Day and another on New Year's Day.

In between times he had to fend for himself, mostly preferring the piano and the skirting boards, but spicing things up on high holidays with bits of curtain and an occasional dollop of parrot pooh when he was feeling peckish.

The dogs accepted him and Beaky parrot and the neurotic Claudia budgie never complained which is as close as they come to accepting anyone.

This evening the hardware store finally took in a shipment of humane mouse traps from China of all places.

I bought one and read the instructions.

The trap consisted of a simple little glass case with a levered door that would close behind the mouse when he entered it.

The instructions said that the best baits would be chocolate or peanut butter.

Nonsense.

I'm not running a fancy restaurant.

He'll have cheese and like it.

I baited the humane mouse trap with some Kilmeaden cheese, the fillet of cheddar.

The instructions advised me to check the trap at least every two hours because some mice might get upset if left in it for longer.

A little vein on my forehead pulsed.

The product manufacturers must thinks us humanitarians is all nuts.

Every two hours my aunt Fanny.

As if I don't have enough to be doing.

I'm not working for the mouse you know.

When I went back to check the trap, after one hour as it happens, me and Mousekin got our first eye to eye encounter.

He seemed quite calm, not a bit afraid, exactly as I'd expected from all the times he shot by me at close range in front of the Divine Mercy Image.

At those times I would leap soulfully into the air while the mouse unperturbed followed whatever trajectory he was on, to wherever he was going without any alteration to his plans or discomfiture at my screaming.

Saint Gemma Galgani is reputed to have levitated in front of holy images.

I know how she did it.

Now me and Mousekin eyed each other.

He was a large brown fellow.

One could be forgiven for thinking he'd been working out.

He sat eyeing me like a pet.

Yes, much larger than the usual mouse.

I wonder.

I shook my head.

Best not to think about it over much.

I consulted the instructions.

"Release the mouse at least 500 metres from your house."

These people are mad.

I'm not going on a midnight hike through the woods with the mouse.

I brought him into the garden and let him go.

He disappeared with a lovely fluid motion into the grass.

It is February the 9th.

He's been with us since December 23rd.

I miss him already.

Later tonight I was telling my maiden aunt about letting him go and she said: "Why didn't you let him into the Maloneys' garden?"

The aunt had a certain mischievious glint in her eye proposing the property of drug dealers who live nearby and who have harassed me for more than a decade, as a release zone for the innocent little creature.

"I thought the mouse might catch something," I answered drily.