Rodent rage

You know those moments when you suddenly find out that something you always believed to be true, or not true as the case may be, turns out to be untrue, or true, as the case may be? I had one recently. Ever since I can remember, I believed it to be true that the staple part of a mouse's diet was cheese. For all I knew, they didn't eat anything else. They certainly hoovered it up in the Looney Tunes cartoons.

My dad seemed to have the right amount of success in snuffing out any mischievous mice that happened to make a home of our pantry using cheese as bait. And not just your garden variety cheese, mind. The trick was, he said, you had to toast it. That way it emitted a pungent, cheesy odor that, evidently, was to mice was kryptonite was to Superman. They simply couldn't resist it.

Enough times I saw him relieve (and with delight, I might add) a wooden mouse trap of its sorry, lifeless prize that I felt confident enough to walk around in public thinking mice, if they didn't love cheese, were certainly not lactose intolerant. If I were a betting man I would've put my pants on it.

Just a few months ago, I discovered why I'm not a betting man. One day, when I was living alone, I came to the conclusion that I had acquired a few extra tenants and as far as I knew they hadn't put down a deposit or signed the lease. I had mice, I reckoned. The peppercorn pellets and the smell of piddle were the giveaways.

Ok, I'll take care of this. I found a few wooden traps, loaded them with pieces of hot, bubbly, cheese that I had roasted over an open flame on the stovetop and placed them strategically in the pantry, saucepan cupboard and behind the wine cabinet in the lounge room.

If my experience counted for anything, anytime between now and the next morning I'd hear a familiar snap, and go to the traps to see some sorry rodent in the last throes of death, with a bloody nose and a steel bar slapped down over its broken neck.

But I never heard the snap. Weird. And if finding the traps mice free was not enough of a let down, imagine my disappointment when I discovered that not only had the traps failed to discharge but that the fucking cheese was gone. Talk about cheeky.

I was prepared to chalk the incident down as a bit of dumb luck on the part of the mice. But when, over the next several days, I found my traps still set, some with bait in tact, some robbed of it, I knew I had a problem.




For one the traps were no good. They were too stiff. Not sensitive enough to be triggered by a mouse's weight. For all knew the diseased little beasts were using the mechanism as a trampoline and inviting their friends around for wild parties.



About this time I started to feel like Lou Monte, the Italian singer who gets played by a cunning mouse called Pepino. "Pepino oh you little mouse oh won't you go away, find yourself another house to run around and play. You eat my cheese, you scare my girl, you even drink my wine, I try to hard to catch you but you trick me every time."





Meanwhile, the pellets were piling up, my cheese stocks were being depleted, my gas bill was soaring from all the cheese toasting, the mice were brave and getting braver and the whole affair was taking its toll on my social life.

When friends came to visit, they would commonly spot a tailed flash of grey scurry across the kitchen floor or squirt into a cupboard or behind the TV cabinet. Eventually my nerves got so frayed and frazzled I gave up on the traps and took to hurling projectiles every time I saw one of the vermin making a mad dash across the room.

Things got ridiculous. One day, Scootikins came over to watch a film and not far into it the mouse presented itself in the lounge doorway to feast on some crumbs. Shhhhhh. Quiet. We paused the film and sat silently watching the furry little fellow as he nibbled away. Discreetly and with slow movements I slid a sandal off my foot, raised it slowly above my head and shot it like a bullet. Thump! missed. As the afternoon went on, the mouse bravely returned as Scootikins and I took turns flinging footwear at the bastard so that we found ourselves watching Withnail and I each with an arm cocked behind our ears and loaded with nikes and birkenstocks. The irony of watching two destitute actors smearing heat cream on their bodies to guard against the cold while we waged war in a mouse-infested lounge room was hardly lost on either of us.

Sometime later, something incredible happened. One of those most incredible things I've ever seen, in fact. And it happened in my kitchen. It was about 10pm one night and I had gotten out of bed to get a drink. I got to the kitchen and turned on the light when I saw one of the mice dart behind the sink taps, stopping to hid behind my fruit basket. That's when I saw an opportunity. If I could arm myself, and stir the mouse out from behind the basket, I might have a chance to flatten him. It was a long shot, but worth a try.

So I grabbed a wooden spoon from the draw and crept over to the basket. Here goes. I rattled the basket and he shot out but only as far as one of the drip pans on the stovetop a few centimeters away. So here we were, face to face. Him curled up in the dish, eyes full of fear and breathing heavily. Me, dead still, spoon cocked above my head. A strange and unnatural meeting of man and mouse. Staring. Man. mouse. man. mouse. Eyes fixed. Man. mouse. man. mouse.

Something had to break the deadlock so I lunged at the stove to force the situation. I was expecting the rodent to shoot out of the pan like a bullet, giving me the slip in the closest cupboard. But he made a mistake. At this point, time got stodgy and lethargic and while everything that happened next, happened quickly, it felt like an eternity and I could see it all, a frame at a time.

The mouse leapt out of the pan and into mid air, arms stretched out as if it were diving into a pool and was heading to my right at about a height between my hip and my mid torso. With one, deft, crisp and precise stroke with my left hand I sliced the spoon's blade through the air, connecting it sweetly with the mouse, at which point time reverted to its normal speed.

The mouse fell to the lino, the last impulses of life draining from its broken, twitching body. Suddenly everything was quiet. And, despite our differences, the sight of the rodent lying still on the floor, next to the spoon, which had been cleft in two by the impact, was one of the sorriest scenes you will ever seen. I took a picture with my camera phone, tossed the body out without ceremony and went to bed.

Postscript. Not long after a friend moved in to share the house and was duly appraised of the situation. It was she who made the revelation. "Cheese? cheese? mice only eat cheese in the cartoons. The fact is they don't even like it."

Hmm so mice don't like cheese? I was totally flawed. I imagine my reaction was much like that of the bunch of guys who were standing around listening to this bloke called Gallieo. "So not flat, you say?" Either my friend was full of shit or for 25 years, my dad had been over-run with cartoon mice. Either way, I was interested.
"So what do they eat then?"

My friend went on to explain that her professor dad had a sure-fire, never fail bait recipe and reliable traps. Soon after she came home with a couple of sleek black plastic traps and a sandwich bag containing a curious bait made from rolled oats and peanut butter. And I'll be buggered if it didn't work a treat.