Who will bell the mouse?

Last night, I opened the bedroom door and saw a li'l mouse jump from a chair and scurry away to a corner behind my comp workstation. Promptly screamed and shut the room door as fast as I could.

A mousetrap was laid for Mr. Mouse with some food in it. Dad then turned on the AC at full blast, switched off the light, and shut the door. I simply HAD to ask why Daddy-O was turning on the aircon for the MOUSE. He said it was to freeze it out of its hiding place and come looking for the food inside the trap. Brilliant idea, no?! Dads !! :-D

Now, Dad had already suspected for a few days that there was a rat in the room. He had heard some "tok-tok" sound on and off and was sure there was something living inside the PC cabinet gnawing away at the wood. Either a lizard or a rat. I'd assured him that it wasn't possible as I would have known if there was one.

However, for some time now, each time I opened this cabinet, I would find 1-inch sized black droppings ALL OVER. Around the keyboard, the CPU, the UPS, etc. I'd presumed these were lizard droppings and that some creepy gecko was residing within the vicinity of my PC and had adopted the cabinet as its apartment. Each day I would throw those disgusting pieces of shit (no pun at all) away and carry on with using the PC.

Back to li'l Mr. Mouse...an hour later we found that it had been caught. Its long tail was sticking outta the trap. The trap was kept on the balcony for the rest of the night as it was too late to do anything about it.

I returned to the PC heaving sighs of relief that the worst was over. Boy, was I wrong!

There was a godawful stink emanating from inside the cabinet. I looked around the UPS/CPU, in the bottom shelves and other top shelves, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. As had become the norm, I found some more black droppings around and threw them out. Eventually, I discovered the source of the stink...

Mr. Mouse had peed all over the cabinet! There was fresh pee right next to the keyboard and near the mouse (the electronic one i.e.). The pee around the electronic mouse was in the shape of a footprint. Apparently, Mr. Mouse had stamped on its own susu and then proceeded to scamper ALL OVER my workstation.

I was completely freaked out by then, as if seeing the poor li'l creature wasn't traumatic enough. Stories about leptospirosis came to mind. Ever since it came to prominence as a fatal disease, it is the scariest thing on earth. Worse than AIDS itself! I slammed the workstation doors shut and ran from the room.

This morning, Mr. Mouse was still in the balcony sunning himself and doing hulahoops inside the trap, with its long tail sticking out. At noon, this man who had been asked to help arrived, and I heaved a sigh of relief on seeing him when I opened the front door and let him in. Informed him that Mr. Mouse was in the balcony.

This guy walks straight towards the bedroom. I politely enquired where he was heading. He said he had been asked to clean the cabinet.

Gritting my teeth, I asked him as politely as I could to please remove the offending criminal from the premises first. Mr. Mouse had already been living in the house long enough as an uninvited and unpaying guest. And after that, could he please come back and clean the cabinet without any further delay. The man gave me a pained look and did as he was told.

He spent the next two hours disinfecting every centimeter of the PC's workstation, with me for company screaming instructions from a safe distance all through, like a background symphony orchestra.

We discovered that Mr. Mouse had chewed away at the cable wires out of sheer hunger or boredom, I dunno which. The internet connection and printer wires had been nibbled at right in the middle of the wires.

Poor Mr. Mouse! Without any semblance of actual food, it had been feeding on electrical wires and the wood panels at the back of the cabinet and then of course proceeding to leave li'l black souvenirs all over for me to encounter.

I spent a good part of last night and half of today screaming my head off.

I dont think I can recover from this trauma for a long long long long long long time.