Inspired by a similar tale elsewhere on the forum, here's a true story.
Once upon a time...
Tigger, my dear departed champion hunter, bought in a mouse from the garden. He promptly dropped it on the kitchen floor. The mouse ran for its life, and disspeared under the splashboards.
That was at 11am.
By 2pm, after removing all splashboards and finding no sign of said mouse, I gave up. Not Tigger, though. He continued waiting in the kitchen, poised like a coiled spring. Ay 6pm I went back to the kitchen. Tigger was still poised. My daughter and I laughed at his persistance.... then we heard the scratching!
By 9pm I was going crazy.
I had excavated every last nook and deep recess in the kitchen for the second time - no mouse, only long lost and sadly missed utencils and some I reckon belonged to the previous occupant. But still scratching. Scratching! SCRATCHING!!
Midnight. Both my daughter and I were at the point of no return. We had the red mists and there was no way that mouse was spending the night in my house. Suddenly, by some batlike hearing detection, my daughter figures the scratching is coming from our eye level, not the floor!
Now... in the corner of my kitchen, and waiting for some hunk to come shift it out for the council, was an old defunct fridge. We moved the fridge out and discovered the a very small pair of eyes staring out from the gap between the outter casing and the insulation. It had climbed up the electrical flex and crawled inside. The scratching was the sound of the little ****** eating my fridge from the inside out!
1am. Right! I will not stand for rodents eating electrical items. Certainly not in my own kitchen. Out with the whole bang shooting match. I convince my daughter to help me carry said fridge, complete with mouse - who I swear was taunting us - down the back garden to dump it by the back gate.
At this point I should add that my new neighbour had moved in only four days previously. They had never seen me or my daughter. The site of two people carrying a fridge through the patio doors and down the garden at 1am must have looked odd. Can't think why.
After a mammoth effort on our parts, and 20 minutes of puffing and panting, my daughter and I had managed to carry the fridge down the 150 feet of rough grass. Suddenly we heard a screech of car's breaks, doors being hurled open, and no less than FOUR coppers lept over my garden fence. The shock made me and my daughter drop the fridge, the mouse lept out and ran across the grass, Tigger pounced, grabbed the mouse and merrily turned tail and headed straight back into the house with it, leaving me to explain to the Sargeant what we were up to...
The moral is, always introduce yourself to your new neighbours
Jxx
