I’m feeling rather proud of myself.

This morning I went to have a shower and was met by the distinctive smell of rotting mouse as soon as I walked in the bathroom.  The mouse Norman had alerted me to last week had not been enticed by chocolate spread or peanut butter in the humane trap I’d set for it.  Instead, it had chosen to end its days behind my toilet.

Rotting mouse is not a good smell, especially when you have friends coming over in the evening.  These friends (nearly neighbour and almost nearly neighbour) put up with a lot from me, but I thought ‘hold your nose when you go into the bathroom – it smells a bit of decaying flesh’ might stretch any friendship.  I had to get mousey out quite speedily.

The problem was that having taken off the shelf over the toilet, I realised that I can’t actually reach the ground behind it….

I put my thinking cap on and thought through some options and eventually I worked it out.  I have designed, possibly the very first ‘dead mouse catcher for when your arms aren’t long enough’:

(Part of a milk carton, with a stick sellotaped to it and another stick for poking.)

You do need to put a torch in your mouth to see when using it behind a toilet, but I have successfully removed the mouse, and now have a scented candle burning in the bathroom in an attempt to get rid of the smell. By the time they arrive, as long as they’ve not read this, my friends will be none the wiser and the only thing they will have to cope with is my cooking.

I may patent the idea.  I could retire.  But I’ll let you borrow the concept should you ever need to retrieve a slightly out of the way, dead animal :o)