All Gods Creatures.........

We are an animal friendly household, particularly Maureen and Emily. We try not to kill anything - spiders, moths, butterflies, beetles etc are all carefully scooped up and helped outside - even in the depths of winter when a full and productive life may not await the unfortunate creature once outside the warm environs of our home! There are some insects that do get killed, however. Wasps, mosquitoes and perhaps horseflies are not on the list of protected species and are generally fair game.

Our rural location and the construction of our home (an original stone barn with thick walls, in need of re-pointing) means that we also occasionally share our abode with mammalian countryside creatures, namely mice. Maureen generally talks about "the mouse" or comments that "the mouse is back" as if mice as a breed are solitary, hermit like creatures that spend their lives plodding singularly between farmhouses seeking out scraps of food, happening on mates only very infrequently and giving birth to one live offspring. The reality, of course, is quite different, by the time you are aware that you have got "a mouse" you probably actually have several families, all interbred, with a well organised food gathering organisation and secret passages leading between floors and through walls. Judging by the trail of evidence left behind in our utility room they obviously have special, highly trained units for raiding cereal packets, dog biscuit boxes and peeling the shiny aluminium foil from around wine bottles that are waiting to get recycled - a particular delicacy for some reason!

Killing mice would not be on the agenda, either by an old fashioned mousetrap or by poisoning. So we catch them, one each night during a "campaign", in a humane trap. The following morning Maureen takes them in the car, down our lane (about a 1/3rd of a mile), over Poley's bridge and lets them go next to the Camel Trail. Crossing to the other side of the Camel River theoretically means that it won't be possible for the mouse to find its way back. The humane trap is a small rectangular plywood box with a wire net/grill blocking up one end, an open opposite end and a sort of see-saw piece of wood in the middle. You set the trap by putting a tempting morsel of something (chocolate usually) on the far end of the see-saw and then making sure that this end is up in the air. The mouse smells the chocolate, walks into the trap and up the see-saw. As it passes the midpoint the wood tips and two metal legs that are spring loaded open from under the end of the wood that is now in the air, holding it in the up position and preventing the mouse from leaving. The mouse can be seen through the grill at the other end.

The first time we used the trap things didn't go according to plan. Maureen had set the trap at about 9.00 o'clock one evening and later, just before going to bed, decided to see if anything had been caught. To her surprise a mouse had already been tempted by the chocolate and was sitting disconsolately behind the wire mesh.

"Oh great! It works! I'll let him out in the morning" says I.

"What! Leave him in the trap all night!" says Maureen, scandalised.

" You can't seriously be considering going out at this time of night (about 11.30pm) and in this weather (a howling gale)" I respond.

But, apparently, she could and 10 minutes later we are trudging along the top of the drive, torch in one hand, humane mousetrap in the other with trees and bushes thrashing about all around us. The idea of releasing mice across the river hadn't occurred to us at this stage and as it was late we just went as far as where the old lane used to lead out of Colesent. It was now that the design fault in the humane trap became apparent. How did you get the mouse out? Remember the storm is raging, there are no street lights, no moon, it is starting to rain and the torch beam has taken on that sickly yellow nicotine like glow which usually means you have about two and a half minutes of feeble light left. Our attempts went like this:- Push in the metal legs that are holding the internal see-saw up and push the end of the see-saw down. Ignore the feeling that you are now squashing the mouse into the top of the trap and look for a twig to lodge in the front of the trap to keep the see-saw in the down position. Get hand scratched by a vicious bramble that you hadn't seen at the side of the lane, swear, find several sticks that snap in the wrong place and are then either too long or too short. Finally get the stick in place and set the trap on the floor to let the little critter make his escape.....time passes.....more time passes.........nothing. Pick trap up and peer inside using the dying seconds of torchlight. There does seem to be a ball of brownish fur at the far end and so holds the trap vertical and uses various high pitched squeaky words of encouragement - "out you come little mousey", "freedom awaits" and then makes that kind of kissy sort of noise that always seems appropriate on these occasions - still nothing. Starts to shake the trap, shakes it a bit harder, and harder and finally hits the other end of the trap a la ketchup bottle. Thud, well not really thud because it was far to light to make that much of a sound, but there was a faint noise as the mouse finally exited the trap and lay lifeless at the side of the lane. The wind dropped momentarily, appalled at the terrible crime that had just been committed and the moon appeared from behind the clouds to illuminate the murder scene in ghostly silver light. " Maureen and I looked at each other.

"Mouse murderer" I hissed at Maureen. She hit me on the arm. There was nothing else we could do except hope that the mouse would become an easy meal for the local Barn Owl or some other nocturnal creature. We made our way damply back to the house and went to bed.

Since that time there have been no more repeats of mousicide. When the trap is set half a grape is placed next to chocolate so that, if the mouse gets caught early in the night, he/she will "be able to have a drink". As previously mentioned the trap is taken across the river. There it is propped open using a bespoke stick and then left in a quiet place whilst the dog is walked. On returning the trap is always empty.

I can't help wondering whether, over the years, our local mouse population have developed an elaborate mechanism to deliver fellow mice back up the side of the valley and into our utility room. A bit like the French Resistance delivering downed airmen back to Blighty. I suppose there would be a system of safe holes, coded cheese and mice saying, in mousease of course,"Listen very carefully -I shall say this only once............"

p.s. It is only our house and in particular our utility room - which is really more like an outhouse - that occasionally have the mouse visitors. The cottages, just to reassure any potential holiday makers, were converted more recently and do not need re-pointing and so don't have any mice visitors. At the end of each week the cottages are in effect "spring cleaned" and all food items removed and so there would be nothing in the cottages to tempt them in even if they could gain access.