The Mouse

Several years ago, we had an old gas fire removed from our living room. The only real sign that it was ever there is a small round hole in the floor by the skirting board. It's not noticeable and usually we keep the kids' library books over in that corner so we can't even see it. It's never been an issue before, until last month.

There have been a couple of times when I'd thought I'd heard a noise coming from that corner of the room, but we have neighbours above us and we hear them moving around, so I assumed it was coming from there. That was until a few weeks back, when we were watching TV one evening and I heard a noise from the door behind me.

Miss 4 has a habit of sneaking into the room, really slowly opening the door when she should be in bed, so I assumed it was her. I'm not sure who was more surprised me, or the small furry mammal trying to figure out how to open the living room door at being spotted!

I squawked for the Spousal Unit, the mouse managed to slip through the gap in the door, and we gave chase, but the little rodent was nowhere to be seen. We searched all the likely spots, but without any joy, so had to go to bed with the knowledge it was somewhere loose in the house.

Before bed, we blocked up the hole in the living room floor (with tin foil and a tub of powdered milk) and ordered some humane traps ready to evict the little fellow.

Not knowing where the mouse had gone, we ordered a pack of four traps, figuring we could set them up in the most likely spots around the house for the maximum chance of catching our little friend. And that's what we did, baiting them with some chocolate cereal that Mr 7 asked for and then promptly decided he didn't like.

Luckily for us, mice do like them!

The following morning, I had a quick scan of three of the traps and was informed by the kids that the fourth had closed. Mr 7 didn't want to slide it out from under the cupboard where it was tucked, but Miss 4 had no qualms about doing it.

And she spotted a mouse!

Tiny visitor preparing to move into new home.

I didn't believe the kids when they told me, because telling your parents you've seen a mouse is the sort of thing you'd do when you were 4 and 7. So Mr 7 borrowed my phone to take a photo, and yep, there was a mouse.

We didn't want to pop the little guy out in the garden in case it took that as an invitation to break back in, so Mr 7 and I took a stroll into some nearby woodland and released it there. It was a little reluctant to leave, but eventually we coaxed it out and watched it run away to settle into its new home.

Reluctant to head for pastures new.

We left the traps set up for a couple of weeks but haven't seen any signs of any more intruders. It must have been an opportunistic scout scoping out our house for a more permanent residence. The hole in our living room floor remains blocked up too!

But it has prompted some interesting conversations about potential family pets. More about that in a future post.