The Saga of the Office Mouse

Our office has a mouse. This may not be a shock after the title of this post, but it does. In fact, a couple of months ago we had a couple of them. I guess it's not really surprising with the amount of food that gets left in drawers or on desks.

Now these mice had been seen by some members of staff during the work days, but it wasn't until one of them was blatantly sitting by one of the big coloured pillars that I saw them. It was a cute little brown thing about the size of a staple-remover (yeah, there's nothing else round here that makes a good comparison). Everyone, including the utter failures who call themselves 'men' were all flapping around as if it was suddenly going to go for their jugular. I picked up an old floppy disk box, sat down beside the mouse and prodded it on the butt until it climbed in. I then stroked it on the head until our Facilities guy came to collect it.

We thought that was the end of the story, but oh no.

Turns out the office either has loads of mice, or the same one keeps coming back. I like to think it's the same one with the single-minded determination of a cross between Jack Bauer and Family Guy's Stewie. I've decided to call him Chuck Dormouse.

A couple of weeks ago they set down traps all around the place. Little green ones. I don't know if they're poison or humane traps, but dozens of the damn things were put down, scattered around the office. No joy. Then they set down dye so they could find the paths the mouse (or mice) was (or were) taking. Then they repositioned all of the traps along these runs. Nothing. Except that now there's little mousey footprints skirting all around each one of the traps. Go Chuck!

I'm considering dropping some chocolate biscuit crumbs in my desk so I can keep him as a pet. I like the idea that it'd be him and me against the rest of the office. Maybe I could train him to do tricks and stuff. That would be sweet...