I went in the bathroom last night and a tiny, dark hallucination went streaking across the floor. "Ach, that's what comes of staying up too late staring at the monitor," I thought, but then the hallucination, instead of disappearing, started running round and round in circles and I had time to identify it. A mouse. Finally it quit panicking and ran to the corner and hid. And here's something I didn't know before- mice don't realise they have tails. I located it behind the toilet cleaner and it bolted behind the toilet pedestal and every hiding place it chose it forgot to tuck its tail in. After a while I gave up trying to catch it and just opened the bathroom door and invited it to find its own way out.

I'm torn between "how cute" and "oh drat".

I told Ailz this morning. She proposes getting a batch of these plug-in doodads she's seen advertised that emit a ultra-sound screetch that mice can't abide. A sort of Pied Piper effect in reverse.

P.S. Since I wrote the above, Ailz has been looking on-line and she finds that the screetching doodads also disgust spiders. What, drive out our lucky spiders that catch the flies? No way! So we need to do a rethink. I propose humane traps. Then I can take the meeces out the back and let them loose in the long grass. I absolutely refuse to kill them.