Living for Disco

I’ve been thinking a little about the animals that we share our urban jungle with. There are two events that made me think of this recently:

·BF and I found a dead mouse outside his house at the weekend, which I nearly stepped on.
·Someone today at work, clearly in the grip of mid-week hysteria, has asked why we never see baby pigeons.

The clear answer to the last question is that it’s because they emerge, fully formed, straight from hell. Tom, who sits opposite me, suggested that they creep up through the paving slabs at night, when no-one is looking. I think that this is more than plausible.

Anyway, the baby mouse reminded me very much of one that fell asleep in the toe of my roller-boot when I was ten. Unfortunately for the mouse, I didn’t know it was there until, after a strenuous session of roller-booting at the youth hut in the next village, I reached in to extract what I thought was a sock from the end of it and my fingers encountered damp fur. Nice.

On another occasion, early in the morning, I was attempting to rescue a mouse from being eaten by one of my family’s five cats. Picture the rustic scene – junior Rachie, clad in a fluffy dressing gown and clutching a piece of toast, dances around in front of the warm aga in her bare feet, attempting simultaneously to make the cat drop the mouse, and to shoo the cat from the room. Unfortunately, the cat dropped the mouse in the exact spot that my left foot was about to occupy. I’ve not been able to hear the word ‘squish’ since without thinking of that fateful morning, and the feeling of mouse between my toes.

I don’t really know why I’ve felt the need to relate my mouse-murdering past. Perhaps its my looming plane journey – I need to confess all my misdemeanors to someone…