The Probert Road mice: events take a sinister turn

I wish I’d taken a picture what I’m about to describe but sadly I did not. Put it down to a combination of confusion, bewilderment and having to leave for work. There may be an opportunity to do so later, but I expect that the bizarre, macabre scene will have gone.

This morning after breakfast I looked out of the window at our garden. Think of a member of the duchy observing his land. A very lowly member of the duchy with a very small patch of land. And then realising that he doesn't actually own it after all, it's rented. My landlady is around this week and is doing some work on the house. Yesterday she had been doing some gardening and so I was having a peek at the heavily pruned bushes. I noted that the gigantic spiderweb with the massive spider in the middle of it had gone. Phew. She’s also been doing some work in the kitchen and has been rooting about behind the fridge in an attempt to try and draw an end to our mouse issues.

As I looked around the garden, my eyes fell onto the rusty wheelbarrow. More specifically, one of its handles. Lying on there was a dead mouse. That’s an odd place for a dead mouse. Then I noticed that there was something under the mouse. A post-it note. On the note was written ‘My new address is [something I can’t remember], Clapham. x’.

So that’s the handle of our wheelbarrow, with a post-it note on, and a mouse corpse on top of that. Not a normal morning frieze I think you’ll agree. I just stared at it for a bit, with several ideas swirling around my still not fully awoken mind: did a cat leave it there as a gift? Did Claire the landlady find it/kill it? But why leave it and not dispose of it? Is she messing with my head? Is someone else messing with my head? My housemate moved out at the weekend – but not to Clapham - could she be responsible? Could the mouse have climbed up there and died of natural causes? Or been poisoned and climbed up to die? I don’t think any poison has been left out in my house. Is it some weird satanic ritual? Brixton voodoo? What about the post-it note? Is this a threat from the mouse I removed last week [I recently caught and released a mouse using a humane trap] showing that it is not happy at being evicted from my house and has killed one of its brethren in order to show me that it’s coming for revenge? Who has moved to Clapham? Did the dead mouse leave the note and then somehow die immediately after completing it? If so, just think of the tiny milk bottles piling up outside the door?!