Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Readers with good memories may remember that I was locked in a battle of wits many months ago, with some manner of super-rodent possessed of abnormal cunning and intelligence. In common with locations on which the media descend to cover the story ‘du jour’, just because the reports have dried up, it does not necessarily follow that the situation has ended. In fact the conflict has remained frozen over most of the summer. My foe’s last appearance was in mid July, just after I returned from Russia. I had lifted the traps at my girlfriend’s behest, lest we should return to the smell of decomposing mouse. When Chekov’s away …… We were enjoying an Indian takeaway (the cupboards were bare) when the intruder reappeared, displaying even more insouciance than normal. It was clearly necessary to remilitarise the living room, re-priming traps and equipping myself with poison (a WMD deterrent if you will). This display of might appeared to do the trick. There hadn’t been sight or sound of...

As regular readers of the blog will recall, my struggle with a mouse in Belfast is ongoing. No enticement I can offer will beguile the cunning pest into a mouse-trap. Coincidentally the personal lowlight of my trip to Russia was also rodent-related. On only two occasions did we shell out for the convenience of a taxi in Russia. Once to convey us from our hotel in Novgorod, a mile up the road to the train station and once beforehand in Moscow, when we had a rather longer ride to Leningrad Station with luggage. On this first occasion it was a blazing hot day, even at 10am. Rather than wait in a stuffy lobby for our cab, my girlfriend and I took our bags and sat on a grassy bank, under some shady trees. I was happily immersed in the excellent ‘Football Dynamo’ when two large rats came capering through the grass and one of them scurried in amongst our luggage, as if intent on setting up home there. My girlfriend is more circumspect than I when confronted with rodents and its passag...

Last night my rodent nemesis delivered a humiliating reverse in the war of wits being fought in our front room. This morning I found that one of the mouse-traps had been tampered with and the piece of bacon had been removed (also presumably nibbled) before it was tauntingly deposited on the floor some inches from the device. The trap had not been sprung. Previously the cunning freedom fighter had emerged once again from behind the television and disappeared into the cupboard housing our fuse box. This raised my hopes that I may have had him trapped. No such luck. The mouse might henceforth be known as Steve McQueen, because he had managed to find some minute route of escape. This morning I sprung the trap myself and have reset it with the bacon more firmly lodged in the bait tray. I would, however, be unsurprised to find it gone tomorrow morning. My mouse appears to be a worthy adversary and it may be time to take the gloves off. Poison could be the only answer. I refuse to ...

I apologise in advance if today’s posts are a little on the lax side. I didn’t sleep well last night. In fact for much of the night, I lay awake in a state of agitated blood-lust, straining to hear the thwap of an activated trap, and possibly the anguished squeal of a vanquished mouse. My foe is far from Burns’ ‘wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie’. On the contrary, whilst it may be inaccurate to say that the rodent ambled from behind the television when making its first appearance, during Friday’s Holland vs. France clash, certainly its scuttle was imbued with a casual lack of urgency which suggests that it already considers itself an inhabitant of the house fully entitled to enjoy the amenities of the living room. My girlfriend was initially inclined to accept the mouse’s claims of equality of residence (mainly on the grounds that it reminds her of a gerbil), and was eventually moved more by her father’s observations that mice breed, eat things, suffer incontinence and get...