After a peaceful summer with neither mice nor mosquitoes (for a change) a mouse found it’s way into the house. Made immense sounds kept me awake all night, ate my Swedish bread and shat in my marmalade. I looked out next day and found that a Cat Buddha had materialized.

I see, I said to myself, that’s what drove that mouse to party like hell.

Now, a few days later mysterious and creepy events ensued as I caught the intruder in the act munching my bread – again. Startled, but without hesitation, it performed a blistering cinematic kung-fu parkour running over a thin metal wire, jumping on coffee cans flying over my teapot diving almost vertically down (about 20 times it’s own height) not slowing down and then all of a sudden manage to vanish without trace.

Very nice! However: I got traps! Lots of them. Humane traps: licking up the sweetest coriander honey on a freshly baked bread crump it will die in gourmet-heaven without ever knowing what hit it. Or at least that’s the idea. But something is weird; I had noticed that the running kung-fu rodent seemed somewhat big for a mouse, and as previously mentioned, it did make a hell of a noise during the first night; sure mice can do that, but still? Also, I was convinced mice could not reach the bread shelf on the metal grid, normal mice that is. Anyway, I set up the traps and night falls. As soon lights are out I hear running noise and then ZSCMACK!! I say a little prayer “Oh mighty courageous mouse rest in peace”, feel victorious, so fast, it worked like a charm, should I make a speech, take a picture? I go inspect the trap and I find blood splatter alright, but no dead mouse?? It got away, but how? Another trap goes off, without noise, ah, I say to myself annoyed, a dud, setup too sensitive it was and I feel somewhat stupid. But wait, a mouse there?? A small normal one this time??? I got … it? But then … um … what was the other “thing”? It was’nt this one; that got send of into neverneverland with a clean hit as intended?

Days later a certain nauseating smell begin to appear, somewhat of old men (not very reassuring for my ego), and I notice something under a radiator. At close inspection I see blood stains. Now, under the radiator is another trap – a counter measure against invasive ants, double sided strongly glued tape (Which by the way the spiders have figured out how to use as they have found a preference for hovering just over it – a coincidence?). The other guy was stuck in it. The other guy? I pulled the tape out, a slightly smelly dead rodent followed. It. Was. Big. With a tail, a big tail! Last time I saw such a tail it definitely was not attached to a mouse. A rat!! It was a young rat, still small, but indisputable a freaking rat!

As discussed in my post how-to-patch-a-hole-in-the-roof-totally-bio the concept was to seed a forest of date palms after casually enjoying a box of dried dates and then count on the palms to provide natural cover – eventually. Obviously this approach would ask for some patience; however, how has it gone so far, actually (you may ask)?

Anyway, I have to admit to throwing in some other sorts of trees to enjoy a book about cultivating Bonzaï trees I got at Quai d’Art Estampes Japonaises anciennes . Also, one of the date seeds didn’t come from the box I consumed but was offered to me as a gift by two adorable young women from Seoul late night at the reception where I work. Now, then (Surely this is important!): Which one of them is the gift?

If I decided to weed out excess palms then the one left should be that one surely!

Anyone who knows palm trees can see the problem: too many trees too little room and moving them would really require assistance from a brain surgeon to meticulously sort out all the roots without breaking as much as a millimeter of any one of them (As if you damage the root of a palm tree, it just dies, no way around that)…

In any case the summer breeze playing with this baby forest is how things stands now.