Leaving the city was an excellent plan and living in the country has been relaxing and liberating in equal measure. Each night, the fire burns and we fall asleep to the sound of crackling logs and a trickling stream. I can't get tired of the slow pace and the friendly people who always stop to chat. Byron has lots of friends, too, and we sometimes walk with other dog people and chat while the dogs play. Many plusses.

One minus, though. Not so much for me as for Burtwoman, because I happen to love pretty much all the creatures, although I admit I'm not a fan of those flying ticks that swarm on my boy in the summer. Burtwoman, on the other hand, is less fond of snails, slugs, worms, snakes, rats, mice, spiders, millipedes, earwigs, wood louse and other, unidentified little misters.

When we first arrived here, the spiders' webs were a big issue for BW, and I spent a good deal of my time chasing and evicting octopods. Some months in, she chilled out a bit and even, proudly, removed one spider without seeking assistance beforehand or praise afterwards. Well, a little praise. Quite a lot. I was proud of her, anyway, and I thought it might be a development that would result in me getting less removal requests in the long term.

Just recently, though, a new lad appeared in the bedroom. He moved so fast, I wasn't completely sure I hadn't imagined him. There was no distinguishable shape - just a smudge that shot out of sight at the speed I would leave a store that played Lady Gagger.

The second time I saw the speeding smudge, it was in the garden, and it shot from the house to the forest at an unbelievable rate, stopping for just long enough along the way for me to get a positive ID. A little wood mouse was living in our garden and apparently, he'd found a nice little passage into the warm house.

I broke the news carefully, but it did nothing to dull the panic response I was mostly expecting. Burtwoman, it seemed, was not all about mice.

The next five hours, under both, duress and active protest, I searched and chased beneath and behind cupboards and wardrobes, under the sink, behind the toilet, under the bed, and slowly but surely, around the bend, as the little fella Jerried out of every idea I had to catch him.

At one point, I heard him scratching behind a kitchen unit and was able to get a light back there to see him happily chomping on a seed. His little fingers wrapped around it like ours would a basketball and his little ears were so sweet, I had to just stop and watch for a minute, as he enjoyed his meal.

But I was no closer to enacting his eviction and Burtwoman wasn't about to let me go to bed until I had, so I looked up some mouse intel online and found that peanut butter might just be his Achilles' heal. We happened to be in possession, so I wiped a blob on one of the cupboard shelves and lay in wait for his little tippy toes to come along and sniff it out. I would then open the door and slap a glass jar over him so he could be relocated to the woodland. Of course, there was the issue of speed, but I figured my training would account for that.

Like an idiot, I waited, listening at the crack of the door for more than fifteen minutes for those little toes. But I didn't hear a thing. When enough was enough, I tendered my resignation and demanded to be released from duty. The only thing to do was to remove the bait, so as not to encourage more guests.

I opened the door and there in front of me was ... nothing at all. The surface of the shelf had been licked clean, right under my nose, and I hadn't detected a thing. The cheek of it! I bet he tiptoed in, bib around his neck, and tucked in like there was no question of invitation, licked his plate clean and left in his own time. And no tip for the waiter.

Clearly, I was in a battle of wits with a superior opponent. Bit in reality, I was perfectly happy for him to stay. I didn't see any reason to evict the little lad, besides keeping BW happy and in control. That was, until the next morning.

Overnight, Burtmouse had seemingly spent a good deal of time perusing his meal options, as the majority of our new spice packets had been sampled and disregarded. And our little friend had left a tip this time. A trail of them, in fact. All across the food surface and a few in the spice box. But the part that really got me was the large concentration of mouse tips he'd left next to the curry packet. I dare say, he'd had a curry and it had given him the shits. Oh, dear. Can't say I envy him that one.

Burtwoman spent the entire day disinfecting everything in sight and I was roped in to help. And the funny thing is, I never did catch him. He just had enough and moved out when the moment struck.

I'll say one thing for Burtmouse;
He knows what he likes and he's not willing to settle.

What a guy.