★ The Small World of the Mouse

I just received an email from Michael Fuchs — thriller writer and author of The Manuscript and Pandora’s Sisters — telling me that my com­ments mech­an­ism sucks. Here’s what he tried to post:

That’s really a very funny coin­cid­ence. I checked in just now due to acute bore­dom at work. And would you believe it? Our house mouse turned up just on Friday. I got a single-line e-mail mes­sage from Anna, the text of which was that we have a mouse; and the sub-text of which was that I was in trouble.

There have been a couple of sight­ings — he’s a dar­ing little bug­ger, com­ing out in day­light, and Anna even admires him grudgingly. She’s named him Marcus. I was sit­ting at my work­sta­tion yes­ter­day when I real­ised he was dead at my line of sight — on top of a framed pic­ture of Anna’s fam­ily, on top of Anna’s dresser.

I fed him some chocol­ate. I texted Anna: ‘Marcus is a cutie pie!’.

Anna was not thrilled by either of these actions on my part.

I too picked up a ‘live cap­ture’ mouse trap at Home Base. It recom­men­ded pea­nut but­ter as bait, which we didn’t have, so Anna tried jelly. (Seemed intu­it­ive enough.) However, when we got up this morn­ing, either Marcus out­smar­ted us (I’d briefly ima­gined him remov­ing the whole back cap where the food goes) — or he doesn’t like jelly.

I already know he likes chocol­ate; but I’ll cer­tainly bear Muesli in mind if he con­tin­ues to elude us.

I intend to release him in the church­yard round the corner. While I’m not sure he has just the right tem­per­ment for it, per­haps he will liven things up there — as a churchmouse.

Now, off to for­ward this to Anna, ostens­ibly to show her it’s not just us, but I already know she’ll merely take it as me defend­ing A) the non-lethal trap and B) the exist­ence of Marcus in general …