Wednesday, May 13, 2009

We Won't Be Invited To the PETA Convention This Year

The salon is in an old building in an older part of town. Old buildings have mice; it's just the way it is, I know that. But when I was doing one of the staff's hair this afternoon, even I was somewhat startled when we saw a mouse run across the doorway and behind the water bottle we use as a doorstop. (When the mouse was behind the water bottle, it was magnified to about 40x it's size. It was most disconcerting, let me tell you.)

Now, I've seen plenty of mice before, and they don't scare me or freak me out. (Not like maggots or earwigs. Now those I freaking hate.) We haven't had mice in this house since Toby came along, and I'm happy to not have to deal with them.

The two other occupants of the colour room had other ideas, however, as they proceeded to shriek and scream and jump up on chairs. Not me, though, I gave them both a withering stare and chided them for their hysterics and went to go capture the mouse. When it came running right at me!! No one was more surprised than me to hear the spine-tingling screech that I conjured up....it was blood curdling.

Anyway, Barb, the Fiercest Receptionist In All the Land, who is a champion of animals everywhere, and myself, who managed to compose herself after her unseemly display, chased that thing all over the salon in an attempt to catch it and take it outside. We were quite a sight, jumping around and down on all fours and giving the occasional yelp of surprise when it charged at one of us. Thank God there were no clients at the time. (Summer said "imagine if someone came in right now", just as Barb and myself were crammed into the closet with just our bums poking out.)

Finally, after about 10 minutes of this, Barb cornered it and I managed to slip an empty tupperware container over it, and she was able to carefully bring it outside, where she let it go beside the gate leading to our back alley. ("All the easier to find it's way back to our basement", I said.) She tried to coax it into the alley, but the dumb thing ran straight out into traffic and got run over by a truck.
Seriously. It was tragic.

So next time we see a mouse in the salon, we plan to catch it, train it to do shampoos, and never let it go outside.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a picture this put into my head...funny and sad too.