Greedy Guts

Remember Hercules the Mouse?  Yup, that one.

Apparently he made himself a lovely nest out back under an old plastic container, where he shredded old sacks to his heart's content and settled in.  As it's in a corner out of the way, I left him be.

However...

I hadn't been throwing out crusts of bread for him regularly, and one morning I woke up to find this:

The bloody beast had decided he was starving and eaten his way through the barely-open kitchen window to get in!  There was sawdust all over the sink and little mouse footprints in it where he'd made a beeline for the dog's food bowl.

Damn mouse.  We now close the window securely at night.

And then there was the galloping.

Favourite Man often works late into the night and into the early morning hours.  One night he heard galloping in the ceiling.  Yes, galloping.  Not a light little mousey-foot-run, but rather a herd of rodent elephants (OK, just one) clonking up and down the ceiling.

Woke me up at 3:47 the next night, and my son heard it too.

As much as we love the concept of Hercules the half-wild mouse, enough was enough.  I added "Finale" to the grocery list and inserted it carefully into the ceiling.

A few days later there were signs that something had eaten it, but no turning-vrot-dead smells, no sign of a furry decomposing body - and all was quiet.  Had we succeeded in killing Hercules?  And if so - where was he?

To test the theory I put out a crust of bread where the dog wouldn't reach it.  Within an hour it was gone.  Hmmm... that particular mouse is still alive and well.

So who did we kill?  And did he escape to the neighbour's ceiling to perish?  I suspect so - mere days ago the Pest Control guy was parked outside the house - perhaps to remove an exired rodent that had started to make his presence known nasally....