Brian comes back
Brian reappeared at the weekend. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Brian is the mouse I occasionally share my apartment with. I say “occasionally” because he hasn’t been around for a while. He tends to come and go as he pleases, which kind of baffles me somewhat as he doesn’t have a key.
Anyway, I shouted at him last time and he just took off. That was over a month ago.
Now Brian was back I decided I was going to treat him differently this time. I felt really guilty after shouting at him and realised that it was my own fault that he abandoned me. Now he’s returned, I thought, I’m going to treat him with a lot more respect and patience.
For example: On Sunday night we were sat watching the TV at around, say, 10 o’clock in the evening. While sat there I decided that I needed the toilet. I move to get up and, seeing me starting to head to the bathroom, Brian rushes across the room and darts straight in there before I could. “Bastard”, I thought.
Then I remembered I was going to be more patient with him. No, I decided, I’m not going to bang on the door and swear at him until he comes out, even if he is in there for bloody ages again.
After about an hour I started to think that maybe he was just doing it to annoy me. After all, he KNEW I needed the loo. I gave it another ten minutes and, deciding that no-one should monopolise the bathroom for that amount of time, I let myself in.
Here’s the weird bit. He’d vanished. Now there’s no exit to the bathroom except the door I’d just barged through. There’s not even a window or skylight or one of those cartoon mouse holes in the skirting. There’s nothing. Short of donning some mouse-sized scuba equipment and riding down the brown-flume , I have no idea how he managed to get out.
I’m beginning to think Brian has some sort of escapology super power.