Joseph Cooper

The Enemy

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the living room with the kids, when I heard a scream from my wife in the office. “There’s a mouse” she yelled and slammed the door.

We then found evidence that it is a real destructive little shite .

We found a couple of, not so important items, that had been well and truly chewed up.

We have rats in the attic, these things are normal in a house in the countryside in Sweden. We have to live with the rest of the countryside, rodents, badgers, foxes, owls, snakes, deer, elk, we have seen them all in the garden.

The rat problem upstairs is under control, and we happily co-exist as long as they don’t venture into our space.

We keep the numbers down with traps and poison all seems to go well.

The mouse downstairs in the office is another kettle of fish.

I keep a lot of stuff I do not want chewing up in the office, and as I said before, this little shite, likes to chew.

It has been spotted and chased nightly, over the past few days, to no avail.

I have set 7 traps of various kinds and it seems oblivious to their charms, or so so bright as to say ” You must be having a laugh”.

Tonight, I walked into the office after seeing Everton get beat 3-2, not in the best of moods, and there the little shite was, in the middle of the floor, as I switched the light on.

I chased it with a piece of wood, to beat its brains out, it was fast, too fast for me, and jumped behind the radiator.

There it sat, but with its tail dangling out the bottom. I put on a glove and took it by the tail, literally, it sped out from the radiator and disappeared. I still have half the tail.

So, the war continues. I have a sneaking admiration for this little rodent. Rats are easy to deal with, but this mouse is clever, quick, cunning.

In three years of fighting rodents out here in the countryside this little mouse is the toughest adversary I have faced. It will meet its end. The end is nigh.

UPDATE: 28th November 2009

Half Tail Super Mouse

Three days after my last post about the mouse, and quite a few skirmishes later, the battle is finally over. This was a hell of a mouse to catch, and as sneaky as they come.

Finally, I noticed bite marks in the poison block, and this meant that after days locked in the office, hunger was finally getting the better of it.

Probably under the influence of the poison it finally went for one of the traps it had ignored for so many days.

A raisin on a conventional mouse trap, delivered the coup de grâce.

It is strange the way a good battle, makes one have respect for a worthy opponent.

As it lay there bereft of life, with its half a tail; a battle wound from one of our more exciting encounters.

I did feel a little respect, and a pang of regret, then I threw it in the bin