Rodent invasion

“Oh, that’s just the mice,” I replied. “Or maybe rats.”

“Mice? Rats? Oh my God,” he shrieked. Three times.

“I’ve lived with them for years,” I said. “But I’ve never seen one in the flesh,” I added, trying to calm him down.

He was shocked. He couldn’t believe that I was sharing my home with “filthy vermin”. He was so incensed I was surprised he didn’t run out of the house screaming at the top of his lungs.

It was the first time outside of a Tom and Jerry cartoon that I had seen the fear of a mouse or rat make someone shriek.

“Ugh, I’ve eaten at your house. You cannot share your house with these vermin,” he squeaked. “They need to be exterminated.”

The ranting continued. He brought up a whole manner of problems I was “bound to” encounter - Weil’s disease, a house fire and some sort of mystery bug he thought I probably already had.

In Cincinnati, USA, he said, harbouring vermin is a fourthdegree misdemeanour - punishable by 30 days’ jail and a $250 fine.

I kept to myself the spectacle, one morning last year, of a large brown rat skulking near the shed. I have to admit there was a certain self-interest involved...my friend would never again enter the shed to get the lawn mower out should he find out.

My friend Googled exterminators, and two days later they turned up. The gruesome twosome were dead ringers for Mr Orange and Mr Pink from Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

Well, I thought to myself, if they can handle machine guns they should be able to manage a few furry pests.

I told them about the noises coming from above the kitchen ceiling, the scratching behind the walls and the holes in the floorboard that appeared to be getting wider and wider.

They didn’t bat an eyelid – then asked if we knew about the implications of Weil’s disease.

Without warning Mr Pink pounded his fist dramatically on the worktop and proclaimed: “If you catch it you’re dead in ten days.”

Slightly on edge, I told them to do whatever it was they needed to do to kill the critters - and quickly.

I even started feeling a bit itchy – was that a sign? I panicked.

The exterminators put poison above the lights, down the floorboard holes and scoured the outside of my old crumbling cottage looking for entry signs.

And they left, promising to be back to check on us in a week.

The very next day as I was working at my desk I saw something run through the room. They’d never been seen in the house before. Now I was upset.

The creature was dark brown, fast as a panther and of monstrous girth. But before I had time to think about a plan of attack it had vamoosed, straight through a hole in the skirting board.

I called the exterminators, who said they would return in four days. “But your business card says 24-7,” said I, their dire warnings about terrible diseases echoing ominously in my mind. “Not four days. And not when you’ve left a rat the size of an armadillo in my house.”

They weren’t swayed by my hysteria. Four days it was.

When they finally arrived I explained the rat sighting in full, horrifying detail.

They weren’t convinced. “Look,” they said when further searches uncovered droppings outside, “those belong to mice, not rats.”

Not being an expert on the waste matter expelled by rodents, I had little choice but to agree.

A second dose of poison was all that was needed, they said.

Now I felt terrible. I don’t think anyone objects to killing rats – even David Attenborough hates rats.

But mice aren’t the same thing at all. Mice are sweet and cute and have twitchy little noses and tiny little paws made for holding hazelnuts.

You can’t just kill them.

The gruesome twosome stared at me in disbelief as I voiced my reservations about their plans for exterminating the mice.

Looking at me as if I was insane, they reiterated their warnings about chewed through cables and wires. The little critters could cause a computer crash, a house fire… or worse, they said.

I let them put the poison down. That was a week ago and Mr Orange and Mr Pink haven’t been seen since.

The mice? Well, they’re having a fine old time; happily scurrying around, performing a cabaret twice a day with an afternoon matinee at the weekends.

Honestly, it’s like being in an episode of Bagpuss round here, only without my big, baggy cat.

George the tabby passed away a couple of months ago. I loved him dearly, but throughout all the years he was around, I bemoaned his general laziness and believed that all he really did was sleep and eat.

Turns out while he was eating me out of house and home and generally getting under my feet, he may well have been snaffling up the odd rodent as well. Poor George – I didn’t mean it, you know.