Dom Davis (The Blog)

Our mice are clever little things. Every morning, around 07:30, they line up near the cage door ready for feeding. Zo (or sometimes myself) will then hand each of them a piece of mouse food to eat and they’ll scurry away to nibble away at it. When Zo comes home they’re out again to say hello and there is, apparently, much excitement at 18:30 or so as they come out ready to great me as I come home.

Until last week I thought we’d trained the mice through constant repetition. Feed them the same time and in the same way every day and they get used to the routine. I was, of course, forgetting that we are only the third most intelligent species on the planet¹, something that was drilled home last week.

On days when The Zozo has a day off I will often feed the mice if I have a couple of minutes before I go. I like to think that my wife actually gets to have a lie in on her days off, not that she never does. However, just in case she ever does, I try to make it so she doesn’t need to worry about the mice. It also stems from the fact that they’re all lined up looking hungry and it’s quite hard not to stop and make their cute little days by handing them some food.

So it was that at the tail end of last week I left The Zozo in bed and started to get ready for work. The mice were pleading and I had a couple of minutes so I fed them before heading out. When I got home I asked The Zozo if she’d noticed I’d fed the mice. Apparently not.

Shortly after I’d left she had come downstairs to start doing coursework and noticed the mice all lined up, looking hungry. Assuming I’d not had time to feed them she got the food out and proceeded to hand them each a piece which they promptly scurried off and devoured. No mention or indication of the fact they’d already been fed.

Now these are not starved mice. If anything we give them too many treats and, while not fat, they’re possibly not as svelte as they might be in the wild. No, this isn’t starvation, this is something much more fundamental. You see, over the months they’ve been training us through constant repetition. Line up the same way each day at the same time and we hand them food, scurry off and eat the evidence so when the next human comes they can repeat the feeding command.

It makes me wonder. If they’re clever enough to train us then what else are they capable of doing. I named two of the mice Pinky and The Brain as a bit of a joke but I’m not so sure if the names might be apt. Daisy especially sits and stares at us during the evening and I can’t help but thinking she’s sat there plotting. Maybe it’s nothing, but just in case can I be the first to welcome our new mouse overlords.

¹ Behind dolphins and, of course, mice²

² c.f. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Yesterday our pterodactyl proof bird table arrived. I’d bought this with two main criteria in mind. Firstly, did it look good. Secondly, would it be sturdy and survive gale force winds and giant wing-ed beasties with little or no external support.

After a quick Google I found the perfect match. Two tier, hook to hang the new hanging birdbath The Zozo had got, nice wide base, sturdy wooden construction. Being a man I didn’t read the full set of details (too much like instructions and we don’t need them), leapt straight to the headline figure of 1.6m height, visualised the item in the picture being 1.6m tall and decided it was perfect. Job done.

Yesterday our bird table arrived. It’s… well… big. You see I’d failed to realise the stand was 1.6m tall and with the bird mansion bit on the top (‘house’ doesn’t convey the scale of the thing) it’s about 2m tall. This means it’s all about 20% bigger than expected. One thing is for sure though, it’ll survive a whole flock of bloody pterodactyls

Given the small miscalculation with size the outside area where it’s going needs to be prepared. It’s not our land and is a right of way so blocking it with oversized bird condos will be frowned upon. Chopping back the shrubs and putting it right up against the fence should be fine, it just needs some work one weekend. In the interim the whole thing is being stored out the back in our tiny yard there (and I mean tiny, it’s now full with just the bird table).

Getting the bird table in the house was easy enough. We have a good, wide front door and the table itself was in two bits. Getting the base into the kitchen was more problematic. I had to rotate the whole thing through to get the legs through the door. Getting it out the back door threw up a new problem.

Sitting there, pretending to be dead to sucker me into coming within killing distance, was Shelob. I did what any red blooded male would have done: I ran to The Zozo for help. The Zozo then scooped up Shelob and promptly declared that she wasn’t sure about feeding it to the mice because she’d “grown quite attached to it”. I certainly hadn’t, that’s for sure, so I simply resorted to good old emotional blackmail: save the spider and deny the mice their treat, or show the mice how much you love them and throw the vile thing in the mouse house. That worked. A few seconds later and our very cute mice had descended on the hapless spider and ripped it to pieces with me cheering them on in the background. A glorious moment, I can tell you.

With Shelob dispatched and our wyrmery (with added pterodactyl shelf) stored out back pending assembly and positioning it won’t be long until we’re safe from all mythical beasties for a while.

We have a spider in our living room. Normally I’d not mention such seemingly trivial things but this particular spider is a monster. I’ve named it Shelob which should help convey the sheer monstrosity of this beast.

I’m not great with spiders and anything over a few mm in diameter (including legs) needs to be dealt with using specialist equipment. Medium sized spiders are handled with a glass with a bit of card slid underneath. Larger and more dangerous specimens are handled at a remove with the Dyson. Monster spiders, such as the one we have are traditionally with by small, hairy footed hominids wielding magic swords. Lacking, as we do, a friendly hobbit I am turning to a more modern solution.

The Zozo, you see, is made of sterner stuff than I and will happily scoop up Shelob In Her Bare Hands. This manoeuvre is performed with me safely out of harms way so that should the spider attack, or run, or look at either of us funny I can then run screaming like a little girl out of the house.

Once captured Shelob is then dumped unceremoniously into the mouse house whereupon our cute little meeces proceed to rip Shelob to shreds and devour her.

This is all very well and good but Shelob escaped the attempt to capture her and is still running free. I’ve checked my bag and jumper many times today in case she’s decided to hitch a lift so she can eat me in the office. I’m hoping this is not the case and that I’ll get to watch the latest episode of meeces vs spider tonight.