Patsy Crawford scribbling away
Beatrix Potter has much to answer for. Her anthropomorphising of small woodland creatures has cast a pall of guilt over anyone forced to do away with them.
I speak particularly of mice. Beatrix was big on mice. She gave them bubbly-sweet names. They scurry through the pages of her delightfully illustrated books, hairy little whiskered folk beloved by children who will scream their heads off and accuse you of murder if you haul out a mousetrap.
Sorry kids, but you’ll just have to suck it up. It’s all well and good to have Mrs Frillywhiskers scampering cutely around the bluebells in the garden but it’s not so cute when Mrs Frillywhiskers is pooping all over your teaspoons. As has been the case at our place. And I suspect at your place as well.
A mouse in the house does things to people. It turns us from mild-mannered, animal friendly men and women into vicious killers.
Our mornings are now spent sifting crabbily through cutlery drawers and cupboard shelves to identify overnight droppings.
Put end to end, the line of anti-bacterial wipes we’ve used would reach Uzbekistan. Eradication has become a daily obsession.
We have, of course, laid out the bait. The mice appear to be thriving on it. Mousetraps cannot be had for love or money. As a deterrent the dog is proving about as useful as the proverbial ash tray on the motor bike.
We thought briefly about getting a killer cat but that would never do for the birds nesting comfortably on the deck roof and having pool parties around the birdbath.
Breakfast is ridden with anxiety. Each day we awake to the prospect of a clenched-teeth trudge to the kitchen to assess the night’s activity. Unsurprisingly the mice have been at it again. Our charitable determination to observe the maxim that all living creatures have inalienable rights to life rapidly disperses.
‘Wipes, wipes’, we shout as, already throbbing with hatred, we hurl cutlery into the sink.
Our callousness knows no bounds, but we’ve gone beyond any feelings of remorse for what will inevitably be mousicide.
However, the situation does present a dilemma for people who would strip the ligaments from their shin bones before they’d step on an ant. It cannot be easy to square up your idealism if there’s a colony of mice using your mung bean container as a dunny.
It seems we must all work out our own solution to the problem. None of it will be uplifting.
There are people, I know, who will carefully gather up mice in snazzy little cages and let them go in the bush. Been there. Done that. Doesn’t work. Tried it once.
Still have dire memories of self and daughter traipsing around the Tamar River mud flats in high heels and glittery earrings while en route to a TSO concert. The released mouse crawled away through the swamp. Daughter smarmily observed we’d treated Mrs Frillywhiskers with respect.
‘Bugger Mrs Frillywhiskers’, I’d said. Back at her place the other mice were loading up for the night.
