Of Mice & Sanctuaries

It’s a while since I last posted and that is partly due to still missing my darling Ellie and, we have been working on an exciting new work project, which I shall unveil next week. Clue: it largely involves birds, a lot of them – many quite exotic, some owls, and a few other animals.

Meanwhile, we have had an interesting encounter with the most charming little mouse, who I met in the middle of the night last month. I went downstairs as is my wont at 4am to get coffee, as I write early (very early) in the morning, so as not to be disturbed. I was surprised to hear a curious sound that fell between munching, scratching and ripping and a very slight scurrying. It was coming from behind one of our bookcases, but alarmingly right by the wires for the television and other things in the corner.

I had noticed the previous day some tiny ripped up pieces of paper, so I was already on mouse alert and guessed – rightly as it turned out, that we had a new resident, an as yet unmet new mouse acquaintance.

This ubiquitous little mammal, more innocent and less worldly than their bigger cousins, is the subject of many children’s books, of cruelty from cats and, sometimes, people endlessly depicted in harvest scenes and even our architecture. They are famously celebrated by the Anglo-Dutch carver and sculptor Grinling Gibbons, who nearly always included a little mouse in his carvings somewhere, as his signature. The humble mouse somehow seems to be an emblem of churches, country life – the animal kingdom.

It does seem quite extraordinary that such a tiny creature, in all its permutations, graces our books, galleries, houses, churches and even ducal monuments. As we recently discovered, we finally located the little harvest mouse at the very top of the 1st Duke of Beaufort’s Monument in Great Badminton Church. The mouse peeks out with a very slightly smug and amused expression, perched high up in the intricate flowers and leaves of the garland between the urn and the plinth at the top of Gibbon’s great monument to the Duke. There is an air of conspiracy too – as if the mouse is saying, “if you know where to look, you can see me”, and “guess where I am?”, which lends a childish enchantment to this great work of art.

I met a real live Grinling Gibbons mouse once: an enchanting small mouse, with that golden brown fur and sparkling brown eyes so characteristic of the type, was carried in and dropped in the hall by the cat, but the wee thing managed to run away and up the hall curtains. There it clung to the top of the curtain, looking pleadingly at my parents and me, clearly asking for sanctuary. This produced some consternation as how to best catch such a wily target and deposit him or her (we suspected her) outside in the relative safety of the field hedge. This was duly achieved with the aid of a ladder and a Tupperware box.

The harvest mouse had been rewarded for her bravery and valour and we viewed the cat’s sulks for the rest of the day with great amusement. And what is so fascinating in retrospect, is that the expression on that little murine face was not so very different to that of the Grinling Gibbon’s harvest mouse.

Anyway, back to our latest interloper: this little mouse, was no carving but very much alive, as evidenced that evening when a very healthy and glossy little mouse dashed across the sitting room, from that corner at very high speed. So fast we couldn’t catch her. I’m afraid that I departed to bed with strict instructions to my dear husband to deal with said mouse, but without traps, cheese or cruelty of any sort!

I expected to hear all sorts of banging and dashing around downstairs and was extremely surprised when my husband came upstairs shortly after me.

I enquired the whereabouts of our lodger, and was firmly told she had been dealt with. The remarkable swiftness of the eviction surprised me and I was mercilessly teased until C admitted that said guest had taken shelter in an urn in the hallway, that had been broken the week before, and was waiting to be mended. The back of the urn was open, and it had hidden there. Apparently mice are masters at finding sanctuary.

From there it was a simple task of lifting the urn with the mouse within and gently depositing the urn on the doorstep, allowing little rodent to hop outside into the flowerbed and the dark night. I felt vaguely guilty for about two seconds, but it wasn’t cold and really the wee thing was better off outside. And a smarter conveyance than a Tupperware box…

A few days later I was sitting at the chair in the kitchen, which overlooks the garden, from which one can see the gate. Just to the left of the gate is a mouse hole, right by the wall where I often see a mouse going in and out. Well, this time I recognised the mouse – the same one as was trying to move in for the winter!

Well, we know where to leave the little scraps for it now, as long as it doesn’t try again for board AND lodging. But what Ellie would have thought of the asylum seeker we will never know.

Image Credit: Taylor White Collection, Rare Books & Special Collections, McGill University Library.