The mouse invasion of 2017.

A few weeks ago, The Old Boy and I woke up on a Thursday morning, to a home without the Internet. We called the provider, who agreed to send a technician out. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t arrive until the following Tuesday. 5 days without the Net! Aaarrggghhh!

So at first sparrow fart, on the Tuesday morning, the technician arrived. The Old Boy made him welcome. I mumbled something, trying to appear civilized, even though I was suffering from a mix of Internet-Withdrawal and Getting-Out-Of-Bed-Far-Too-Early Syndrome. (You know, if I could manage to be polite in those circumstances, then surely Mr Trump could have made more of an effort to welcome Angela Merkel. Just sayin’.) Surprise! A mouse had been chewing on the cables. I mean, what kind of deprivation and starvation are our mouse population undergoing that they went straight past the left-over dog food, in favour of plastic?

Problem solved. Internet back on. Mouse traps set.  Everything was back to normal in Computer Land, Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday. Thursday morning we woke up to a mouse neatly trapped, and no Internet. The little blighter had done it again! We called the provider. The technician couldn’t come until the following Tuesday. A cold shiver ran down my spine. I got the shakes. I didn’t know if I could do it again.

The Old Boy got an old mobile phone, filled it with data (I’m winging it here, as I am a techno-idiot) and we used it as a “hot spot”. I’m sure all you computer nerds will know what that means. From my point of view, it meant that I could occasionally send and receive emails. I’d get everything written and ready, before turning the phone on. And, usually, I’d have to get the Old Fella to remind me how to do it even though he said it was “simple”. (Insert emoji face with tongue poking out.)

We caught another mouse. We watched more TV and read a few books. We played games on our ipad. We waited…and waited…

Tuesday morning, slightly later than sparrow fart but still ridiculously early, the technician arrived. Oops! He’d forgotten to plug the hole through which the rodent had crawled. We didn’t know it was there, hidden inside the box where the cables came into our house. Sneaky little beggars, aren’t they?!!

Once more the Internet is functioning in our house. Hallelujah! And, so far, so good. No more mouse bodies to dispose of, so perhaps they have given up. Perhaps they’ve moved next door. Perhaps they’ve found an easier food supply. Perhaps they’ve died of malnutrition. So many unanswered questions. So many mysteries.