I wake up with a start, Cleo hasn’t moved a whisker, so she didn’t hear anything. I lie there deathly still, trying to calm my breathing, was I dreaming it? The soft tap tap tap!
Nothing, so I start to doze off again, when it happens again tap tap tappity tap, almost like morse code. Cleo wakes up this time, or maybe I disturbed her. My brave guard cat.
My heart is now pounding. What is it? It is pitch black and freezing cold outside, it can’t be human – also living so far from the maddening crowd highly unlikely. My imagination starts to run a little wild. If it is an animal, maybe it is a deer close to a window, nuzzling on the old grapes I left out for them and his antlers are knocking on the glass as he chews.
I remember when I first arrived in the highlands I thought there was someone walking around on the stones outside my bedroom door only to find it was a curious deer.
Tap tap tap – again. It is coming from the kitchen. Cleo stretches and curls back up under the covers, she isn’t concerned at all. I venture out of the warmth of my bed, find my slippers and shuffle quietly through to the kitchen, the tapping gets louder and then stops. And then I remember. I had recently installed humane mouse traps in the kitchen as Cleo has a penchant for bringing field mice into the house and letting them free as soon as she is inside and then ignores them, leaving them to roam free in the warmth of the cottage. I had recently found one making a nest in my boots with a storage of cat pellets neatly stacked in the toe.
And here it was, the trap had worked perfectly. A plastic tube like contraption, with spring loaded doors on each end. You put some tasty treat in the middle of the tube and when the mouse steps on the spring next to the food, the doors close shut. It even has little air holes at the top so they don’t suffocate. The tap tapping was this little mouse knocking on the trap door hoping to escape. A very humane mouse trap. I can now release him back to where he belongs.
And this is when the fun part starts. The design is very clever to get the little creature into the tube, getting him out was another matter. I am now crouching outside in the freezing cold darkness, doing my best to push the trap door open without flattening the mouse. So have to tilt the tube up to get him to move away from the door, but then he can’t get out. Long story short – you cannot be unnerved about having a desperate mouse run across your hand to make his escape, which he eventually did. Mission accomplished – back to bed to a cat that looks on unconcerned.
Diary of the peregrinating granny from South Africa 