Hunted mouse owes its life to my spare welly boot
If it wisnae fur yer wellies, where wid ye be, You’d be in the hospital or infirmary, Cause you’d have a dose ae the flu or even pleurisy, If ye didnae have your feet in your wellies.
Over the years I have written of many things – and almost by way of proving the point, I thought that this first week of April I might crave the indulgence of readers by penning a few words on the subject of the humble gumboot.
I have described the childhood scene before: a small farmhouse set deep into the crook of the long north-facing brae that runs throughTain.
It was, and is still today, a cold and wet place, and being then a small dairy farm, there was mud, lots of it, sloppy, cold and deep, and that was very much the order of my childhood.
Especially in winter.
The sitting room, the only room on the ground floor, besides a small hall and (literally) a deep dark cupboard that served as the tiny kitchen, faced north too – over the self-same rutted mud and towards the Sutherland hills – and my mother always liked to recount one particular winter’s day when she was sitting by the window.
My father was away, ploughing or harrowing on the old grey Fergie (they had no car; and this was before the arrival of the new red Massey Ferguson 35).
My mother, busy doing whatever she was doing, as likely as not writing letters on the beautiful wedding present
boule desk that she was to gradually ruin by boiling eggs on (in the kettle), gradually became aware of a small me in
my dark blue duffle coat trotting
back and forth past the sitting room window.
I was a busy, busy bee, and as my
to and fro task continued my mother
became a bit curious as to what I was up to.
In the end she rose from the desk, opened the front door, and took a look.
This is what she saw.
By the calf house, just short of the dairy, was a drum full of old oil that had come from the tractor’s sump. And on the Tain side of the farmhouse, immediately to the right of the front door, was a large puddle.
My mother found me, wearing only one small Wellington boot, carefully taking the other one in my hands and filling it from the drum, and then trotting over to the puddle and tipping the oil out, and then carefully examining the resulting iridescent rainbow colours on top of the puddle.
As she recounted it, I to the cold. Readers can draw what conclusions they may from this early manifestation of my character...
Anyway it was a favourite story of the old lady’s and I tell it today for your amusement: maybe it also explains why athlete’s foot only ever went for the left one.
This welly boot tale comes back to me for a couple of reasons, the first being not such good news.
A bit like when you discover that the black bin liner in the boot of the car, on its way to the bin at the end of the road, turns out to have a hole in it (pooh!), I was carefully taking down some old posts and wire and standing in a flooded part of the field, when, uh oh, I find that there is a hole in my welly, at the back and just above the ankle.
It’s a real downer, sploshing your way back to the house, one foot in the yuch as it were.
My good lady had to give me a hot mug of tea to restore my spirits.
But I digress to a slight extent.
The point of this column is my visit to the bathroom on Easter Sunday morning.
"Hattie was in the loo," said herself, as our paths crossed.
She to put the kettle on, me still trying to blearily focus on the day as I pulled the shower switch.
But sure enough, when I emerged clean and awake, there she was – Hattie our beloved puss cat, sitting with her legs neatly folded under her and staring intently at the corner where the bathroom scales live.
She was waiting. And knowing Hattie, she was going to take as long as it takes. So I donned a towel and carefully lifted the scales by one corner.
Well what a flurry! A small mouse shot out and along the skirting board with Hattie in full pursuit – and then, by
the bag of loo roll, the waiting began again.
I had to admire the mouse’s agility and speed.
Hattie, no mean mouser, had completely failed to impale our small rodent on her sharp swiping claws. Maybe that was why I felt sorry for it and decided to employ my old mum’s patent mouse-catching method.
"Take one welly boot."
And lay it on its side with its open top facing wherever you suppose the mouse to be, and then make a disturbance on the far side of the house, enough to to panic it to flight again.
The first couple of attempts may not work, but sooner or later the mouse is sure to head for the dark safety of the boot, right to the toe where no pussy cat can get to.
Believe me, it works every time.
If you want to catch a live mouse that is up against the skirting board and get it out of the house, then this is method.
Hattie looked confused as I picked the welly boot up.
She continued to stare balefully at the loo paper, and that was where I left her as I stepped out into the garden, turned the boot upside down and shook it.
A soft plop, two bright little boot-button eyes look at me in astonishment, and then it is away like a flash.
As I write, the welly boot is back beside its companion in the hall, and Hattie is eating her morning biscuits. A belated Happy Easter to readers. –
Jamie Stone