Mouse Hunt: The Movie

Imagine, if you will, a frosty January midmorning in the country. Your breath comes out as steam. It’s intensive heating season and Irina’s out to the garage to fetch some firewood Cris chopped over the weekend.

She opens the door, turns on the light and grins, catching a glimpse of a tiny mouse scurrying across the floor to hide behind the stack of firewood. Wood is fetched, fire is stoked, house is warm.

The presence of the mouse is shared with the whole household with the comment “It was so cute!”

A day later, Vlad catches the scent of the mouse and there begins a three-day Watch in the Garage. It’s cold. It’s unpleasant. It’s most definitely not cat time. But the cat sits and waits for the mouse to come out. Which it doesn’t. Vlad is embarrassed and disappointed.

One more day later, Cris sounds an alarm. “The mouse got into the car and chewed through my water bottle!” That night, Cris’s car sleeps outside. Irina’s sleeps outside anyway, so it’s safe.

It is now the following morning and Irina’s just entered her room with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. What greets her there is a confusing sight. The quince she’s put on a shelf for that unique autumn scent is on the floor. There are little brown pellets on the desk. A Cat drawing is on the floor and so is an old foam dough sculpture of a dragonfly she made when she was five. And there’s a noise.

Realisation dawns like a hammer blow to the head. The mouse is in the house. The mouse is in the room. The mouse has crapped on the desk. The mouse has nibbled on the quince. Thank gods, fate and the universe it has not chewed through the laptop’s power cord. Vlad is summoned. The door is shut. The hunt begins.

Now, Irina’s room is about two metres by four. It is not a big room. It used to be a pantry. But it’s got some hiding places and the mouse exploits them all. The moment Vlad forces it out of a hiding spot behind the desk, the mouse rushes to the other end of the room and hides behind a gift bag full of old children’s books. Vlad chases after it, forces it out and the whole sequence repeats.

Vlad corners the mouse at last. He does not kill it because he is bewildered. This mouse is big. He doesn’t know whether he should kill it or it would kill him back. The above sequence repeats. Irina pops out to the kitchen to get a couple of oven mittens and a bag — a plastic bag — to collect the mouse in. We are not at our best in the morning.

At around that point, Cris joins the hunt. Cris is one of those individuals who don’t so much wake up as resurrect themselves every morning. To complete the resurrection, he must have coffee. Then he joins the hunt. He brings to the fight a cardboard gift bag.

Initial hunt sequence now becomes more complicated. Vlad chases mouse, corners it, mouse runs in the opposite direction where Cris awaits with the gaping bag, mouse switches direction to avoid bag, goes vertical up the bookshelves. It scrambles to get a hold, fails, drops to the floor, rushes to hiding spot behind gift bag with books, Vlad follows, repeat sequence.

On the second cycle Irina realises oven mittens won’t cut it — not to mention the plastic bag — and goes to fetch her heaviest gardening gloves. The next repeat of the sequence, when the mouse goes up the shelves, the right glove locks around it and the mouse squeaks in defeat. The hunt is over.

We disposed of the mouse by dropping it out on the road by the house though on second thought, it would have been better to drop it in the dumpster down the road — food galore and a journey to the landfill, as if the mouse deserved it, but we’re nothing if not humane. Cris, meanwhile, while he was returning to life, found out how it had come into the house: through the chimney.

There were chunks of chimney soot scattered on the floor in front of the fireplace and the mouse had consumed the eagle-shaped honey biscuit Cat had put so much effort into making for Christmas.

How the mouse got into the chimney remains a mystery for now because Cris had put a metal mesh over it to avoid a repeat of the Bee Disaster of 2019, when a swarm of bees decided to make a permanent home out of the chimney, got in and couldn’t get out, so when we came to spend the weekend, we found a sea of dead bees on the floor.

The most plausible theory is that it got in through the attic. The attic has never been used. It has never been opened since the house was built. It will be opened soon because we have roof repairs on our 2024 home improvements agenda.

We can’t wait to see what’s up there. Kind of. Not really. Probably corpses. But it must be done. Mice are perfectly fine in the garden but not in the house. Vlad is, once again, embarrassed and disappointed.

P.S. We just discovered today the mouse had gnawed through the chayote. It had grown to 1 metre and striving higher. Regrets are being had.