It was an unusually hot afternoon, and I was waiting for my husband, Idris-the movie and TV star-Elba to return home after saving the world from a super-virus that causes everyone to act like the people in the comments section of Buzzfeed, The Daily Mail and every tech forum, ever.
The blades of grass on our 105 acre garden/chicken farm danced violently as a chopper lowered to the ground. It was him, my husband: Idris-the movie, TV star, OBE receiver and sometimes R’n’B singer-Elba
We locked eyes, and he began running towards me, topless in slow motion when…
*BAM!*
I was awake. In my bed, that I should’ve replaced several years ago, with no Idris Elba in sight.
*BAM!*
It was coming from the corner of my room. I decided to inspect the situation, and by inspect, I mean raise my head two inches off the pillow and look crossly into the darkness.
Job done, now back to sleep. Idris, return to me, my darling. I closed my eyes…
*scratch, scratch, scratch*
I opened my eyes. Nothing. I closed my eyes, again.
*scratch, scratch, scratch*
I opened my eyes, again. No scratchy. And so it continued for an hour: closed eyes, scratchy. Open eyes, no scratchy.
It was 4am. Then it happened. Open eyes AND scractchy…from inside my end closet! Except now it was more than just scratching, there was …tearing?
Oh man, some living thing was in my closet.
A mouse? Whatever it was, it was trying to bust out like SWAT. I acted accordingly:
“Dad! There’s a rodent in my closet where I keep my tampons!”
My dad, considering himself to be a mouse expert in a long list of many other things (whisky expert, cigar expert, style expert, neighbour-observing expert, expert-expert), decided to do what most men do when affirmative action is needed: deal with it later. At some point during the day, my dad carefully placed two well-positioned mousetraps in my closet.
“Now, we wait.” And so we did…
For 38 HOURS
The first night I laid awake having the usual existential crisis, but I was also thinking about that bloody mouse. Partly because I could still hear it scratching away, but also because we were room-mates. No, I was it’s captor, and what was this feeling washing over me? Guilt? Sympathy? For a MOUSE?!
He’d probably lost his way, ended up in a dark room full of tampons; we’ve all been there. What if he was in a progressive relationship with a cat…and they had kids who where waiting for him to come ho-
Oh crap. That was the mousetrap.
Well, that’s that then, he’s dead. Time to sleep off some of that guilt. Also, I wasn’t about to open that closet without backup.
The morning was already off to a morally ambiguous start for unrelated reasons I won’t get into right now. As I returned from the bathroom, having scared the neighbours with my whale-like singing in the shower, I heard a familiar sound.
*scratch, scratch, scratch* and then, “I said, scratch, scratch, motherf***er”
He was still alive. And angry.
WHAT THE HELL?
I think Dad is being unfairly treated, I feel that he is somebody that I might know. He is trying his best and should be encouraged and not exposed as being frightened of a MOUSE.
Otherwise this is a brilliant read.