dinsdag, 12 oktober 1999 13.29

The mice and their adventures

Just a story on wednesday. This time not to make you all jealous, but to show the other side of living on an old sailing boat, with more hidden corners and places I can reach or look into.

After we had come back from Holland we had found a nice young dog sleeping on our boat. It had spend the last night before we left for Holland with us in the taverna and aparantly missed us during our absence, and decided to watch our boat. Soon the taverna owner told us that the dog belonged to nobody, and since we wanted a dog on the boat. this seemed the ideal opportunity. We named him Jonas. The next day's sail took us to Hydra in 6 hours and Jonas behaved perfectly. He did not scream for help, did not jump overboard and more importantly he did NOT shit or pee around. Too good to be true. Upon arrival in Hydra, Jonas got a little nervous seeing land again, but patiently waited till the gangplank was installed and Jonas leached on. Took him for an nice walk and he peed al over the place, clearly demonstrating that he knew where and when to pee. To pee or not to pee. That night Jonas decided to leave the boat and stroll around Hydra, not to come back anymore. We looked and searched for two days. Mobilised half the island and all the waiters from the tavernas we knew. But in vain. Jonas now lives happily on Hydra, for all we know.

On the trip >from Aegina to Hydra, Marit discovered that our kitchen had been visited by other four feeted friends that like to eat plastic, nuts, cheese and others. Right.......mice......or even worse RATS. This meant war. A nice dog that responds to a name, when you call him is one on a boat, but creepy furry monsters that hide themselves in little corners, showing only their tail (try to estimate the size of the beast, when you only see the tail) is a different story. Suddenly I recalled the story that Bas told this summer of a boat that also had a rat on board, who ate all the electricity cables, cushions, etc. It took them 14 days and taking half the boat apart, before they were able to catch the bloody animal. It was something I was not looking forward to. Marit went off to the local petshop to buy poison and traps. The traps were happily installed. The poison came on a sticky board, where the idea was that if the mouse came to eat the poison, he would stick to the board and could not run away anymore. Half an hour later, sitting on a terrace in Hydra, Marit came to notify us of a lot of noise from the cupboard where all traps were installed. I took another zip >from my frappe, knowing that my troubles soon were to be over. I took another half hour and than I boldly entered the pitch dark boat to go and see my catch. Opening the cupboard was heartchoking. The two traps were both empty, all food eaten, both had been snapped closed, but no mouse. The sticky board had food prints all over, but no mouse. Either this motherfucker was smart.......or very big. I started to be convinced of the latter. This was a complete war now and my pride was on the line. Not to mention that my authority as captain of the boat and in control of things was on the line as well. With my usual calmness I convinced my crewmates that it was a matter of time before we caught him and there was nothing to fear. Nonetheless sleeping became a more dangerous and less relaxing event. The idea of the monster crawling around the boat and unmistakenly the bed........... We bought more poison, he ate it. The traps were set with pistache nuts, cashew nuts,...... only to be eaten empty and triggered, but not catching anything. Soon the idea of a dead, rotting and smelling mouse in a far hidden corner of the boat, as a result of having died of all the poison was a less comfortable idea. I saw myself, for days clearing out the forepeak of the boat, going for the smell, trying to find the hiding place. So I took the poison away and had all my money on catching the bastard in the trap. Three traps, four days and plenty of food later, still no result. Finding empty, triggered traps started to give me the stupid feeling of not achieving anything and leaving the mouse fat and well fed, laughing his head off (which was fine with me as well at that stage.) On day 3, I caught only a piece of the tail in the trap. Knowing that he was wounded mentally, he would be just as mad as I was. This made us equal opponents. The setting of traps continued. 5, 6 times a day he would take whatever I put in the trap. I finally went as far as superglueing nuts to the trap, so that he had to pull harder to trigger the trap. No result, he did not like glue.

Day 5 was BINGO. Having received a fresh apple from a taverna owner, I decided the apple was of more value to me and my attempts to catch the mouse than as a nutritional value to my crew. The trap in the kitchen cupboard had a nice big fat grey monster in it. Dead as hell, as the trap snapped his backbone. Proud as hell I threw him over board, without showing it to my crewmates. It was smaller than I expected and had defeated me too long. The humiliation was complete. I made up a story about the size of it for my crewmates, including some fishermens stories about he size and slept peacefuly again.........for two days. Then Marit discovered that more food was still ravaged by little teeth, toiletpaper was being eaten at, cottonwool was going missing and I got visions of a nice warm little nest with six more of those creatures in it. Bring out the TRAPS, AXES, NUCLEAR BOMBS, etc, This war was not yet over, nor won. This time, he was wondering around on the portside of the saloon. Jochem, who had slept on that bunk, decided to go and sleep temporarily on the starboard bunk. One night playing backgammon he walked just pass by me. He got obnoxious and confident. And so did I. Going to bed at midnight setting the trap with fresh apple and lying in bed, waiting for the sound of the trap. 20 minutes later it triggered. I jumped up out of bed, only to find an empty trap....no food ....no mouse. Setting it again, I was determined this was my last sleepless night. Happily enough the shortterm memory of a mouse is even smaller than the capacity of my one-cell brain, so he returned and was TRAPPED. Flashlight in my hand I checked the cupboard where the mouse was caught, but still alive. Struggling to get out. It had caught him right in the neck. His eyes looked at me with fear and disbelief. I took a hammer, finished him off, threw him overboard, pulled the dinghy away as I was afraid a dead mouse would climb onboard our dinghy and celebrated my victory with smoking a cigarette. Mankind was saved, it felt

I slept like a baby, but had filled the traps anyway with more food, in case his 5 brothers and sisters were still on board. Does anyone know what the breeding time is for mice??? So when can I expect the baby's to eat he rest of my cupboards.

Love Roland and Marit