A mammoth undertaking

The mice are back! I first noticed them last Wednesday night. When I say “noticed”, that is an understatement. They were partying hard directly above my bed every half an hour from midnight through to 4am. So just when I thought they’d finished and I was about to drop off to sleep, they would start up again. Their latest trick is to scramble up and down the cavity in the wall behind the head of my bed, which sounds extremely loud indeed in the small hours! That’s effectively the only cavity wall in the whole house, and when I had the insulation survey done a few months ago the surveyor said it wasn’t worth the disruption and effort of insulating just the one wall. Maybe not from a thermal efficiency point of view, but perhaps it might stop the mice!

I had a major meeting with my boss on Thursday morning, to review the status of the bid, so I was really unhappy to get so little sleep. Plus I had to interrupt the meeting to place an emergency call to Tim the pest controller, and I really don’t like mixing home and work to that extent. To give Tim massive credit though, I called him at 10am to say there was a problem, and he was at the house at lunch-time to investigate it. Better yet, it’s all covered by the annual rolling contract, so it won’t cost me a penny. He’s put tons more poison up in the loft, so I hope that things will quieten down shortly.

My boss asked me on Thursday, when I was yawning through his meeting, why I hadn’t simply moved into the spare room to get some sleep. I think the honest answer is that I just didn’t think of that. I am not at my most logical at 3am! Last night the mice were at it again. I think the poison is kicking in, as it sounded as if they were knocking things over in the loft, and I swear that one of them was so clumsy he lost his footing and fell down the cavity between the walls behind my bed. But this time I was prepared, and didn’t just lie there listening to them. I took my pillow and moved into the spare room, where I’d made sure the bed was made up ready. So I did at least get some sleep.