25 August 2016

It must be the heat





I have just shed tears over a dead mouse. 

We had just showered after our morning cycle ride and I was dressing in the bedroom.  I looked up and saw a mouse scuttle along the edge of the bath in the en suite.  I squealed, as women tend to do, and slammed the bathroom door shut.  Paul came upstairs to find out who was murdering me and seemed unperturbed by the news of the unwelcome guest in the bathroom. 

“I’ll sort it later, I’m in the middle of making a tomato sauce for lunch.”

I finished dressing, cleaned the bathroom and as I was standing at the basin washing my hands the little devil ran across my feet.  Again I squealed and fled the bathroom.  Paul didn’t even bother to come upstairs this time.  I told him the intruder was much bigger than a mere mouse and must surely be a rat!  He continued to make the tomato sauce.

I went outside into the garden, and picked more tomatoes.  Paul took some mouse traps up to the bathroom .  When he came downstairs he was not happy.  I had left the tap running in the bathroom and nearly flooded the house.  Oops!  The temperature was still rising and a hot wind was blowing from the south, too hot for lunch outside today.  

We ate indoors in the cool gloom, the tomato pasta was delicious.  While I was clearing the lunch things Paul came downstairs carrying a dead mouse.  Not a rat, just a poor little mouse.  I don’t know why I cried. It must be the heat.





14 comments:

  1. Well that was a nice way to treat a poor little soul who was only trying to keep cool ! :- ]

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    1. He should have used the guest bathroom.

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  2. Perhaps he just wanted company?

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  3. I can't stand rodents. We had tiny mice at the last house we lived in and it made my skin crawl to see them run along the floorboards. Talk about screeching and throwing a fit! My husband thought I was crazy to be so frightened of tiny field mice but I couldn't help myself.

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    1. I think they're quite cute but not inside my house!

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  4. We live parallel lives. Not only did we have pasta with tomato sauce (Carluccio recipe) for supper yesterday, but I also caught a mouse up at the barn. It must be the time of year.

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  5. Oh no - quelle horreur! I am in a 'can't kill anything' mode at the moment, not even a huge orange slug I found nestling amongst the courgettes. I carefully lifted it out and put it in the shade somewhere else. Mice inside the house is not a good thing though.

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    1. I hate killing things, even spiders are just trapped and thrown outside. But slugs are horrid, I usually throw them into the farmer's field. Sadly mice in the house are vermin and have to go.

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  6. My English teacher (She was English) taught us this poem. I loved it. Your pretty mouse picture above reminds me of it:

    I think mice are rather nice;
    Their tails are long, their faces small;
    They haven't any chins at all.
    Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
    They run about the house at night;
    They nibble things they shouldn't touch,
    and, no one seems to like them much,
    but, I think mice are rather nice.
    (Rose Fyleman)

    Where is the rest of the litter?!
    Greetings Maria x

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    1. Lovely poem, thank you Maria. The rest of the litter? Yikes! (Traps are still in situ.)

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  7. We have not had another since Rio bit the dust. It must have been a hot singleton. Have now shifted the trap. BTW it's Sod's Law that if you leave a tap running it's the Hot Tap so wasting water and the 'lecky.

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    1. I was forgiven because it was the cold tap!

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