Mouse in the House

I saw something dart under the refrigerator....oh my God...it was a mouse.  And, I felt responsible  - I had had the garden doors open after insisting to Angela, my host, that I would help her prune and tidy up her garden that had become a jungle.  And now I had somehow let a mouse in.

I shut the kitchen door hoping that the mouse would stay under the fridge for the night, and I would not be woken up by something running across me as I went to sleep on the couch in the living room next door.

The next morning, I had forgotten about it, and as I was enjoying an unusual lay in, I got up to have a drink and I saw this tiny thing now sitting on the floor across from me.  It had moved from the kitchen into the living room.

How do you catch a mouse in someone else’s house when you don’t know where anything is?  

I opened the garden door again and came back to find it still sitting where it had been.  I decided to ask it to leave.  I explained how the garden was much nicer and that it would be much happier outside.  I told it that we really couldn’t keep it inside.  It just looked at me and then darted behind the cupboard.  

I thought if I could trap it in under a box or a tin, I would be able to contain it, and started taking everything off the floor - cushions, sewing machine, chairs and bags in readiness for the sudden assault I anticipated having to make to catch it before it ran away again.  Now I had everything on the table apart from the mini trampoline I found standing against the wall.  That was not going to fit on top of the table.  The mouse kept darting out from behind the cupboard but every time I moved, it went back into hiding.

Now all I had to do was find a box or a tin but no luck.  And then I lost sight of the mouse.  

So now I was worried it would find its way into my suitcase, clothing, papers, etc.  I proceeded to get all of my stuff off the floor, including my suitcase which was now perched on top of my bed.  And then I saw it again, as it scurried under the piano, this time a lot closer to my bed.  I never thought I would be on my hands and knees in my pyjamas looking for a mouse after having turned my host’s living room upside down.  Lucky she wouldn’t be home for several hours.  

Four hours later, the living room is back in order but the mouse is still at large....