House of Mouse

Working on a sci-fi mag can obviously turn you paranoid. Ever since I reviewed those X-Files DVD box sets I knew they would come for me. It wouldn't be an Independence Day invasion with motherships hovering over the world's capital cities. It would be much more subtle than that.

So the other night when we heard the scurrying sound in our bedroom I knew the invasion had started. Strange creatures had come to our world (the house) from a far away land (I'm guessing the garden, but maybe from next door - you never know). They had their eyes set on the precious commodities we humans had collected, namely the contents of my wife's wheat bag. It took us a few days to understand what was happening, but when we saw the wheat scattered on the floor under the cupboard and saw their signs (or mouse faeces to give them their proper name) we knew we had to act fast.

Yes, we have mice. No, really! What is this, the 1800s? Should I call my Victorian butler and ask him to send for the rat catcher? And why not get the chimney sweep in while he's at it. Anyway, we're a practical couple so we moved into the spare room for a few days and searched the interweb for a solution. Of course being the lefty loonies we are, we didn't want to kill the mice using normal traps. And we definately didn't want to feed them poison and have them crawl back under the floorboards to die. There's a reason they don't make dead mouse-scented air freshener.

So we settled on a box-type affair that they can crawl into but can't crawl out of. We baited it with more contents from the wheat bag, since we know they like that. On the second night we caught two mice! That in itself was a big surprise as we thought we only had one.

And that, you might think, is that. And it would be if we hadn't heard more of the little feckers last night. I was pretty sure there'd be a new batch to empty out of the trap today (we've been taking them to a nearby park as the cat population in Walthamstow would surely make toys out of them). But checking the trap, it's empty!

Oh well, there's always tonight. We will repel the invaders. Unless they're like the mice in The Hitchhiker's Guide- in which case we're up against the finest minds in the galaxy.