Follow the Mome Raths

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

So today was a weird exam. I had just gotten my paper and was about to settle down to write when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked down to my left, at the airvent in the floor. A second later, a little head popped out! I kind of let out a gasp of surprise, but it was only a little brown house mouse (Mus musculus for those in the know, and much smaller and thinner than the big round deermice I'm used to at home) that we'd seen running through our lecture a few weeks previously. I watched him climb out of the grate, and run around in my row. Needless to say it took me about 10 minutes to focus on my exam again, and through the rest of it the little mouse kept popping in and out of the grate, and running around behind me. Actually, this reminds me of something that happened this summer...

I was sitting at my desk at work (in a Provincial Park, so wildlife is rather expected indoors) when I felt a soft tickling moving up my leg into my lap. I looked down, and there was a deer mouse sitting in my lap! I kind of said "Oh!" in a loud voice, although I'm not scared of rodents, it just surprised me! My supervisor turned around and I said something like "Mouse!" and she sees it and completely goes bananas, which brings the gate attendant in, who ALSO goes bananas. They grab a container and start trying to get the mouse into it, meanwhile it's gotten scared and run behind me so I'm trying not to squash it between my back and the chair, they're trying to sweep the mouse into the container with the lid but swatting me instead...havoc I tell you. Eventually they got the mouse into the container, and our Assistant Superintendant took it out to the woods and set it free again.

Karlie@11:26 p.m.