I want one!

There is a story in the Daily Mail today, of a man who empties a plastic tub of odds and ends onto his bench, and uses the tub to spread bird food. When he is done, he just puts the tub on the bench. When he has gone indoors, a mouse puts all the bits back in the tub! He has managed to get pictures. Seems genuine. I need one big enough to move spanners!

Maurice

Mouse has got to be eating something. Probably the bird food.

How big a mouse to tidy spanners?

You'll be wanting a Rat for that

Video on the BBC **LINK** Brace yourself for a Disney moment

Brian

Mine obviously has a devilish streak and hides my stuff.

Mike

No its monkeys who tidy up wrenches!

Joking apart, we often accuse the fairies of hiding our things, but when I replaced the slate roof on our cob garden wall that attaches to my garage I found a nest with all manner of odds and ends from the garage - bits of electrical fittings, a plastic tap used on the winemaking syphon (probably smelt intoxicating to the mouse!), chewed up instruction sheets and a huge mass of sycamore seeds.

I would love to claim I had spent ages looking for the syphon tap but in all honesty I had forgotten I even had it.

When I found the nest I could only think mice are as attracted to the smell of mineral oil as I am. A reassuringly rust free and homely smell .

Next thing is to encourage the mice to wash up our dishes and we are almost home and dry. To this end I keep an old 'working, too good to throw away' dishwasher in our outhouse. After having mice raid the bags of dog food I now store their food in the dishwasher along with bird food and a bag of lawn seed. The little beggars are getting in there now also - I don't know if they go up the waste pipe or if they have found a plastic component that they have managed to chew through. Still I don't really begrudge them a few ounces of lawn seed (its what they have gone for first)

"You'll be wanting a rat for that"

Rats only do files of small tail types I'm told

But in practice these vermin keep learning

They always start small but as they get old

A big bastard ratty is yearning.

deleted. V8

Edited By V8Eng on 19/03/2019 18:30:57

Reminds me that on my honeymoon in a cottage on Skye I loaded the washing machine and it dumped a few gallons of water on the floor.

A mouse had eaten a rubber hose inside.

Neil

Just watched the video on the ITV tea time news! Busy little mouse!

This little chap is obviously just doing what a lot of us have done in our younger days - building himself up a tool kit and consumables from our place of work.

It was often said that when the Shipyard hooter blew in Barrow-in-Furness all the purloined and 'liberated' tools in sheds and garages around the town would vibrate and turn to face the place from whence they came. .........Allegedly.

Guy

Never seen any evidence of mice in my workshop although things do go missing. Comment from wife when I am rummaging through looking for something, “what have you lost now” , my reply is haven’t lost it just can’t find it.

Dave W

If a 'RAT' tidied up the spanners then surely it must be a RAT-ch-ET . . . . (I'll get my coat then !!)

Yes - the tidy-minded mouse was mentioned on the radio too.

A friend used to keep his 7-1/4"g, NG loco in a un-heated wooden shed so to keep corrosion at bay kept a garage inspection lamp in the firebox, while an old blanket over the whole lot kept it clean.

Centrally-heated luxury accommodation for for the mouse who found it, and made a nest on the running-plate with threads from the blanket!

As to why a mouse might behave like that though, collecting small but inedible objects in a convenient pot, is a mystery perhaps any zoologist here might be able to explain!

I used to have one of those industrial truncated cone spools of kevlar thread (from my bowstring making days). I went looking for it in the barn to be told by wife that she had seen a pair of rats, one at each end, squeaking intructions to each other as they co-ordinated rolling it out of the barn, through the cat flap and up into the woods. She was too fascinated to interrupt...
I'm still waiting to see the rats wearing cat-proof kevar vests ...

pgk