By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

Oxted town’s in Surrey

By nearby Tandridge Village.

The M25 at three lanes wide

Runs across the northern side

A pleasanter spot you never spied

When begins my ditty

Almost seven weeks ago

To see The Wildlife Gardeners suffer so

From vermin, twas a pity.

Mice!

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They came indoors and watched the telly

And stole the chestnuts from the larder

They ate the chocs and chewed the jelly

And made the housework that much harder.

Ate crumbs inside some sheepskin slippers

Their wee made cupboards smell like kippers.

They blew raspberries at next door’s cats.

And deaf to the sonic mouse repeller

That should have sent them packing

By shrieking and squeaking in

Fifty different ultrasonic sharps and flats.

But didn’t.

At last the Wildlife Gardener in exasperation

To Mortons The Padlock hardware store went shopping.

‘Tis clear’ I cried, ‘The mice have determination

And holes in our house, well, they need blocking.

But in the meantime, as the woodwork is crap,

A temporary solution is to buy a trap.

Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!’

An hour we looked at mousetraps.

At length, suggested “Little Nippers?

For those tiny rogues inside your slippers?”

There would be blood. But instant death?

Would I want them breathe their final breath

Inside my house? They did not, after all, choose to be mouse.

So allowing the mice to be aliver,

I left Mortons lighter by a fiver,

And in my hand a trap humane

To catch mice and let them go again -

But three miles hence, by bike and rucksack

Else the blighters find their own way back.

That night the trap was baited

And hidden, primed for a little fella.

Not even until midnight we waited

Before a mouse followed the sweet scent of Nutella.

Clunk! The trapdoor shut. The mouse was caught.

What an effective trap I’d bought!

But from within there glowed red eyes

I’d never seen a mouse that size.

His tail was long, his ear was torn.

He growled: ’You’ll curse the day that you were born’...

Tense his whiskers and a-twitch all...

The mouse equivalent of Phil Mitchell.

I tipped him in an old vivarium

With water and food as per the Geneva Convention

A Perspex Sangatte for mice facing exiles

To Dormansland, a distance of five miles.

We went to bed and shut the door

And thought of Mitchellmouse no more.

The morning came. The mouse had fled;

He was at large in our homestead.

He’d punched a hole in the vivarium roof

A tank we thought would be mouseproof.

Well, mouseproof to a normal creature

Not the rodent version of the Terminator.

So what to do? Mitchellmouse was loose

And fancy free all round our hoose.

We’ll not re-catch him in that trap, no never

He’s sussed it out now, he’s too clever.

But ever the optimist I set it once more

And left it primed upon the floor.

On Christmas morn, the trap was sprung

Another mouse was trapped among

The presents and the Christmas tree.

We peered in, two red eyes glowed out

Recaptured, after his breakout

Was Mitchellmouse. Like his namesake,

He was all brawn and all beefcake,

Low IQ. He’d followed his stomach and not his head

To that plastic box with the chocolate spread.

Alas, alas for Mitchellmouse!

Sellotaped inside his plastic gaol.

We took him for a five-mile drive

And released him, bowed but still alive

In a field of stubble and old hay bales.

And there he can stay, he’ll not be back.

Unless he follows the railway track

Back home. Unless he manages to have

A high spec, fully-charged rat-nav.