Terry said no to the Habitrail idea. Instead, he went downstairs and pretty much ripped apart the kitchen in his bid to hermetically seal it against Clive and his little buddies – for yes, it seems that there is MORE THAN ONE OF THEM.
"They’ve been crapping all over the place," Terry told me, his face pale as he emerged from under the sink. "It’s hard to imagine how one mouse could crap so much."
We looked at each other, light beginning to dawn. CLIVE IS NOT WORKING ALONE. The mice, they are taking over the world, folks, and they’re starting with our house, in much the same way that when the neighbourhood kids start destroying the neighbourhood, they’re always sure to do our garden first. Be good if we could maybe be first in line for something nice once in a while, hmmm?
So, knowing that what we’re dealing with here is not one solitary, timid little mouse looking for a warm place to lay his head, but actually a whole hell-raisin’ gang of them – probably on motorbikes – makes me feel a little bit less sympathetic towards them. Even more so given that, in order to try and deal with them, Terry has sawed up wood INSIDE THE KITCHEN, and it was just last night that I doused that place with bleach and picked up all the crumbs one by one. Now I’ll have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN, and it’s like, "Get out of my house, Clive, you little b*****d, ok?" These are some bad-ass mice we’re dealing with here, and also, they ate Terry’s cornflakes again, so we’re really not happy.
Now that the mouse entrance (the bit under the sink where the pipes come up into the cupboard) has been sealed up, we’re hoping Clive and the gang won’t come back. As a test of their cunning, though, Terry has laid some sunflower seeds down inside the (now empty) cupboards, so that we’ll know if they do make it over the top. As if, you know, the mouse droppings aren’t enough of a clue. He’s laid these seeds (do mice even like sunflower seeds?) out in the shape of a giant ‘T’. Now, what would be really cool would be if, when we went back to check on them, Clive had changed them into the shape of a giant ‘C’, no? And if Clive does that? He is SO getting the Habitrail…
Or, in the Scottish: "There’s a moose! Loose! About this hoose!" Gulp.
Terry found the evidence of our rodent visitor this morning, when he went to pour himself some cereal and found that the box had been … nibbled. Now, I’d like to blame this on Rubin (let’s face it, we blame him for everything else), but the sad lack of opposable thumbs on the fur guy would have made it pretty difficult for him to open the cupboard door (Wait… how did the mouse do it, then?) so we have to conclude that it was, indeed, a mouse.
Now, I’m not frightened of mice, so what bothers me is this: WHY? Why do we have a mouse? Is it because we are filthy perhaps? (Note: we are not filthy. In fact we are clean! But then, what’s with the mouse? Why is it here? I mean, are they like headlice or something? Do they prefer clean heads houses? Say they like clean houses…) Is it because no matter how much time I spend cleaning and scrubbing and – yes – picking up bits of grass and fluff from the stair carpet WITH MY BARE HANDS because the Turbo Tiger totally broke, the floors are still always covered in all kinds of crap? (And that we really can blame Rubin for, seriously). WHY THE MOUSE?
Also: I feel sorry for the mouse. It mean, it’s not like it’s his fault, is it? He was probably all, "hey, I fancy gettin’ me some Crunchy Nut Cornflakes" and so he did, and now we’re going to have to capture him and kick his furry ass back to wherever he came from. Or actually, come to think of it, maybe not back to wherever he came from, because wherever he came from is clearly too close to my cereal cupboard for comfort. And yes, we will use a humane trap (and yes, we will buy plastic containers for the cereal from now on), but he’s probably all little and cute and twitchy-nosed, and maybe we should keep him? Maybe we could get him one of those Habitrail things, and feed him cereal, and all live happily ever after?
I think we will call him Clive.
 Rubin writes…
Yeah, so nothing much happening this week, saved Amber’s life on Sunday, but seriously, all in a day’s work for the Rubinman, so not even worth talkin’ about really…
OK, I’ll talk about it, because actually, it might be a lesson to all of yoos who think it might be a good idea to mess with the Rubinman, because, let me tell you, you do NOT mess with the Rubinman. So, anyways, Sunday afternoon I take Amber for a walk, and we go for our walk in the woods behind the house because, it’s like, being part wolf and all, I’m totally comfortable in them woods, y’know? Anyway, I’m sniffing prowlin’ around like a mad thing, here a pee, there a pee, everywhere a pee pee, and next thing I know, this BAD MAN has jumped out of the wood, and he’s, like, totally threatening to kill Amber.
Well, I did what any wolf would have done in the circumstances: I started barkin’ like a maniac, totally threatening the guy and basically letting him know that the Rubinman was on the scene now, and that if there was any killin’ to be done, it would be the Rubinman that would be doin’ it. I would totally have bit his face off, and actually, I nearly did, but I could see Amber was scared, so I decided to get her out of there. And anyway, my barking frightened the dude so much that he up and ran away like a sissy girl. Hee! Rubinman to the rescue!
Later, the “poleece” came to interview me, and, I suspect, just to get a look at me. It’s not everyday you get to see a HERO, you know. I had been out digging me a hole and I was DIRRRTY. I was totally the SMELL too – really, really smelly – but the “poleece” was, like, totally awed by me, I could tell. He’ll probably dine out on the story for years.
I sat on Amber’s knee while she was talking to him cos I knew he would appreciate me being there – he could learn a lot from me. He said to Amber, “You’re just lucky your wolf was with you at the time. If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of young Rubin here, well, none of us would be here today.” It’s true, you know, and Amber knew it. When the “poleece” left, she gave me a JUMBONE and even Terry kept going on about how BRAVE I was. “Like a lion,” Terry said – I bet he’ll think twice about giving me a row for peeing in the house in the future.
I think the “poleece” are probably going to ask me to join the force. I won’t go though – it’s obvious how much my Amber and Terry rely on me just now, I mean they can’t look after themselves at ALL. I’ve got, like, all the responsibility for looking after them resting on my furry shoulders now – it’s just a good job I’m WOLF really, I mean, I don’t think many dogs would be as brave as me…
Smell yas!
Rubin
Because I know you’ve all been beside yourselves with worry and sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear the end of my "held at branch-point" saga from the weekend, it’s OK, you can stand down the vigil, I’m still alive. My teen assailant didn’t follow me back to the house and beat the crap out of me with his branch, or anything, I just got totally bogged down with work again. But anyway…
Before I go any further here, I have to first of all eat my words on the whole "the police totally don’t care if I DIE!" thing. Ahem. The police did indeed turn up on Sunday night to take my statement, and very nice the young man was too. He reassured me that no, I was not wasting police time, and that yes, teenagers are very scary, aren’t they, and, why, that young son of a gun? REALLY COULD HAVE KILLED ME. He also said that in the future I should make free with the phoning of the police any time I see gangs of teenagers in the area – get this – EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT DOING ANYTHING. Yes! We have a result, people! Needless to say, my fingers have barely been off the phone buttons since… Nah, actually, I jest. The thing is, you see, I haven’t been back to the ghetto yet. Nope, I’ve been walking Rubin in another, slightly less-ghetto part of town, and I’ve been taking Terry with me, because to be completely honest, I’d rather not be threatened by psycho teenagers every time I set foot out of doors, thanks very much.
Speaking of the psycho teenager, the nice policeman told me there is next to no chance of them finding him, and this is mostly because of my total inability to accurately describe people, places or distances. Especially distances. Seriously, if someone says to me, "drive for 100 metres down this road" I will probably drive forever because I have absolutely no conception of what 100 metres (or whatever the distance in question is) might look like. None. It’s strange because I know what one metre looks like – it’s exactly the same length as those metre sticks we used to use in primary school, funnily enough. I just can’t for the life of me imagine what 100 of them laid out in a line would be like. No imagination? No spatial awareness? Just plain crazy? Yup, that’s me alright.
I’m also not so hot with guessing people’s ages and heights. Put 5 people in front of me and ask me to guess what age they all are and I can guarantee I will get every single one of them wrong. That’s why I hate it when people do that "What age do you think I am?" thing sometimes. (WHY DO PEOPLE DO THAT?) I know I could be at least 20 years out – on either side – so seriously, folks, never ask me that. And I’m really, really bad with children’s ages, mostly because almost everything involving children is a complete mystery to me. When asked to approximate the age of a child (and weirdly enough, this seems to happen to me quite a lot) I can only do so by making reference to my niece and nephews, whose ages I know.
Now, in this case, I knew that "taller than George but not as tall as Michael" probably wouldn’t have been much use to the policeman (and would also have been completely wrong given that I wasn’t actually wearing my contact lenses at the time of the incident, so the "teenager" could have been 43-year-old woman for all I know, or even a visitor from another planet), so I had to settle for my usual answer to these kind of questions, which is "Ummm… I’m not sure." So our conversation went a bit like this:
Nice Policeman: How far away was the person when you first seen him?
Me: Ummm… I’m not sure.
NP: And what height was he?
Me: Ummm… I’m not sure. Tall? Or maybe… short?
NP: I see. What age would you say he was, roughly?
Me: Ummm….
And so it went on. They will obviously never find him, but at least I’ve done my civic duty, and have been given carte blanche to phone the police anytime I feel like it, which will probably be a LOT.
Other than that, the rest of the week has been pretty boring. I did manage to buy a new summer skirt for £9 in the children’s section at Asda (age 10-11, people. You can see how this screws with my ability to guess people’s ages, can’t you?) but no way was it as exciting as being almost-but-not-quite attacked in the woods, so actually, nothing exciting has happened this week, and really, I don’t know why I’m even writing this.
As you were.
p.s Rubin’s (heavily embellished) take on Sunday’s events are here…
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