D.C. Nobes
‘Twas the night before the wedding, and all through the house … there was a mouse stirring! We ended up calling it “The Psychotic Mouse” because it didn’t behave like any of the shy mice we had ever encountered before or since.
We were relaxing the evening before our wedding day. We were both reading with a mildly diverting program playing in the background on the television. Suddenly, a mouse ran across the middle of the living room, in full view. We chased after it, and it disappeared down the basement stairs. We decided that it had been enticed by the smell of freshly baked cookies that my wife-to-be (WTB) had made to feed to our guests the next day while photographs were taken at the church and before departing for the reception venue.
So we went to bed thinking that that was the end of it. I was asleep and WTB was reading, when she looked up and saw the mouse sitting at the end of the bed! She threw her magazine at it, which chased it off the bed and woke me up. Then began the comical chase around our second-floor flat.
We tried to follow and trap the mouse, but it managed to avoid us and ran into the front room, which was normally the small room where we could sit in a reclining chair to read and listen to music, and which had a spare closet we used for storage. However, it was at that time the place where we stored the wedding gifts, so it was full of fancifully wrapped boxes. How were we to find it in that maze?
We thought that it had been lured into the light by the smell of freshly-baked cookies, so we took one cookie, placed it on the floor, put a box above the cookie, and held one end of the box up by a stick. We had a string attached to the base of the stick. Then we waited for the mouse to be enticed into our trap. And waited. And waited.
In that moment, the mouse appeared, sitting on top of the recliner, in full view in a brightly lit room. This was the point at which we realised that this was not a normal mouse; this mouse was not afraid to be out in the open and fully exposed. So we christened it The Psychotic Mouse (TPsM).
For some reason, I decided to try to use insect spray, hoping, I suppose, that it might drug or slow down the mouse. Why did I think it might work on a mouse? I don’t know. I wore a bandana as a mask because, from experience, I knew that the bug spray tended to have more of a negative effect on me than on anything else, and I also wore gloves. I also, for whatever bizarre reason, had grabbed an umbrella with a handle and held the umbrella at the pointy end. Why? I do not know. There was once upon a time photographic evidence of my strange approach, but that evidence is either gone or buried.
So I sprayed the mouse with the bug spray and … it ran away. Sigh. Well, that didn’t work. What next? Where did it go? And then suddenly there it was on top of the recliner again, preening itself, cleaning itself. So what did I do? I thought, I guess, that whacking it with the umbrella might at least stun the mouse, but instead I managed to golf TPsM into the closet! Oh shit. Now what?
We were standing there, wondering what to do next about a mouse that had been golfed into a closet full of all sorts of stuff. Then WTB noticed that the knitted cover on the recliner was moving. There was a mouse-sized lump underneath the cover, and it was slowly moving towards the top of the recliner. TPsM was heading for the top of the recliner again!
WTB cried out, “I got it! I got it!” and ran out of the room. She returned wearing rubber gloves we used when cleaning. She called out to me, “Open the doors!” Our flat was on the second floor of a house on one of the main streets running north–south in the east end of the city of Toronto. I ran to open the door of our flat, and then down the stairs and opened the front door of the house. I went back up to the front room and watched as WTB rocked back and forth, saying, “I got this! I got this!” She had an idea but was obviously hesitant. In one movement she lunged forward, grabbed the knitted cover above and below the mouse-shaped lump, twisted the cover, and ran for the doors.
She carried the twisted cover down the stairs, with me close behind, out to the sidewalk beside the street, and shook the cover open. Nothing! Oh no! Was the mouse still up there in the front room? She shook the cover again, more vigorously this time. And out dropped the mouse, hitting the sidewalk with a thump, and then ran stunned out into the street, zig-zagging back and forth. “Oh no!” cried out WTB, “I hope it doesn’t get run over.” I am happy to report that TPsM made it across the road, but where it went from there, I do not know.
And so ends the tale of The Psychotic Mouse. Even now, decades later, I can picture the whole event so clearly.
D.C. Nobes is a physicist, poet, and photographer who, aside from 2 years on Vancouver Island, spent his first 39 years in or near Toronto, Canada, then 23 years based in Christchurch, New Zealand, 4 years in China, and has since retired to Bali. He used to enjoy winter, but admits that he doesn’t miss the snow or the cold. He thinks almost all poetry is meant to be read aloud. His poetry and art photographs have been widely published.
Instagram: @sebon52
Featured photo by Nikolett Emmert (Pexels)
