COLUMN: 'I don't remember much of what happened in the minutes after the kill'

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT 

A mouse defecates close to 100 times a day.

So, a cluster of mouse droppings, in the region of 70 or 80, would suggest the creature has been in around 24 hours or so.

Then there’s the scarier thought that a few mice have been in for a shorter period and the poop trails are only just beginning.

You’ll find out soon enough when you start laying traps.

I’m no mouse expert but the old-fashioned wooden traps are the best and peanut butter is a great bait.

Mice are common in a new build, apparently.

My wife discovered the first one. In the plant room (we used to call them hot presses), she first noticed that flick of a shadow, that dark grey that moves in your peripheral vision.

And then came the scream.

As I ran to see what the problem was, she told me she just saw a mouse in the corner of the room.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the one running past her foot as she reversed out of the hotpress.

We had dealt with a mouse infestation when we rented a house in Ballybough in Dublin many years ago now, we knew the drill, let the fear and panic takeover, get the shivers and then go to war.

We caught two the first night, but the next morning I spotted a single, solitary mouse dropping by the fridge door, a long way from the hotpress.

The battle of the plant room was won, but the war would rage on.

We called in an expert.

He told us they were confined to the plant room and he pulled out the fridge, nothing there.

He says what I saw may not have been a mouse dropping and if the plant room traps caught nothing in the next 24 hours the problem was resolved and the relevant holes outside filled.

I agreed on the plant room, I felt we had achieved a victory there, but in my gut I knew we had one more to take out in the kitchen.

A few hours after the mouse expert left, I headed out for my run, I was at the car when I heard my wife’s screams.

The dog was looking at something on the hinge of the patio door.

Audrey went to see what she was looking at and there sat a field mouse, doing his best to camouflage into the grey door.

This was a disaster.

The clandestine battle of the traps in the dead of night wouldn’t work here, this was a standoff. If he came down off the hinge, the rodent could go anywhere.

Also, how did the exterminator miss him?

He must have slipped past him when he pulled out the fridge.

That’s €120 I’d like back.

Anyway, back to the standoff. Audrey had legged with the child.

At this point, it is worth explicitly saying, I am terrified of mice, can’t stand them and I’m getting shivers just writing this.

But this is our new home and who was going to come and sort it, no one. It was time to overcome the fear and time for some serious adulting.

I grew up a lot in these few minutes.

As you all know, I’m a Tipperary man. I always have a hurley in the house and with a hurley; I can be dangerous.

I always had the skill in hurling, even if I do say so myself, but lacked the requisite mettle. If only I had it all, I could have played county.

That’s enough lamentation over my non-existent hurling career.

The mouse had to go. I felt it in my bones and the shiver down my spine. This was the war to end all wars.

I use the camo of the kitchen cabinets to sneak up to the patio door and in the front of the fridge.

I reached around the fridge and aimed the butt of the hurley at the little devil, and with marksman-like accuracy, drove the butt in his direction and it hit his tail/back area and took it clean off.

He let out a little screech, so soft I almost felt bad.

The mouse fell onto the matt, still alive but moving slowly.

I dropped the hurley, grabbed a nearby brush and swung it down with all my might. No screech this time, the war was won.

I don’t remember much in the minutes after the kill.

But I know I was shouting lines from the film Training Day.

I vaguely remember saying something like: “I’m the man up in this piece…King Kong ain’t got sh*t on me.”

But I’m no Alonzo.

I felt really bad because of how he died and remembering the soft screech.

I wish I had the courage to catch him and release him into the field.

But I didn’t, I only had the courage to butt him with a hurley and hammer him with a brush head. Nevertheless, the guilt soon passed, a dead mouse can be easily discarded.

I just flung him in the bin, jotted these words down, and the little field mouse shall never cost me another thought.

Let’s hope we see no more of them.