Of mice and — Reg

In the early eighties eastern Australia was covered by a seething brown carpet of small brown furry bodies. The country was in the grip of a major mouse plague. The mouse plague had tendrils that reached into the cities even as far as the harbour end of Greenwich.

Our semi in the lower reaches of Greenwich was beset with the more than occasional squeaking, rustling and scratching of mice. They loved our kitchen and we caught quite a few with mouse traps. That was an unexpected expense since neither Jenny or Annie would take the dead mouse out of the trap. They just threw the whole shebang into the bin!

Once, with Reg and I both at home, we heard mouse noises from the kitchen. We both ran in and to our immense surprise we could see the tail of a mouse sticking out from under one of the cupboards. The little bugger thought he was hidden in the dark but a quick firm grip of the tail and a pull brought him out into the light wriggling and squirming. We looked at each other wondering what to do with it?

An acquaintance of ours was nursing an injured bird of prey — it had a damaged wing. So the fresh, live mouse went into a shoebox. We took it to the eagle carer and handed it over as live prey for the bird. The bird must have been pretty young because it was startled by the mouse dashing around the floor of the cage and retreated to a corner. The carer had to stun the mouse before the bird would go near it.

Working in the garage one morning Reg and I were shocked to see our toaster crash onto the concrete drive outside the garage door. As Reg stepped out and picked it up Jenny called out from the lounge room window “look inside”. He couldn’t see much through the toast slot so turned it over and opened up the crumb door. There, crushed inside was a dead barbecued mouse. In trying to pull it out Reg snapped off a rear leg and held up what looked like a well-cooked drumstick. “I’ll clean it out” he called up but Jen yelled back at him “No! Throw the toaster out!”.

To save on cleaning we used to cover the grill tray in the stove with foil. Reg heard a mouse scrabbling in the kitchen. It sounded like it was on the grill tray. He dashed into the kitchen, whipped the grill tray out but no mouse. In disgust he slammed the grill tray back into place and came back out into the lounge.

A little while later, may have been the next day, Annie was in the kitchen and we hear her scream. Reg ran to her and burst out laughing. It seems when he slammed the grill back in the mouse had tried to dash out of the way and had been caught between the grill tray and the rear of the stove. His head, hands and some chest were sticking up over the back of the grill tray just like the Foo cartoons and his legs, body and tail were below the tray. He was very dead.

We didn’t throw the stove out.