There's a moose loose . . .

Come to think of it, I've spent a fair part of my life in the countryside where mice are more prevalent, so there's been quite a number of mooses loose aboot the hooses.

My formative years were spent in a rotting pile near Wye, in Kent. Still essentially a huge and very des res, its estate was listed in the Domesday Book, the cellars dated back to 1086.

It was home to a monastery during the Reformation, then to Jane Austen's brother Edward in the 19th century. The moat had been drained in 1888, but the spring that fed it was still in full cry, so damp was the house's bete noire and rotting' an apt description for many of the floors.

Stilletto heels punched through some of the boards like tissue paper - as my sister found to her cost. When we first leased the property from a local farmer, it did not even have electricity.

I was sitting beneath the gas mantle in the kitchen peering at my homework when the engineer invited me to switch on. The contrast between gas and the fluorescent was like night to day.

But I digress. With a dairy farm at the end of the garden, battalions of mice made whoopee in the hay and straw and, despite cohorts of farm cats permanently on the qui vive, some rodents found shelter with us.

I was woken one crisp morning by that familiar scrabbling of a mouse and, armed with a shoe, went into battle. I was getting nowhere, so hied off downstairs for a broom.

There ensued a farcical chase of Rixian proportions, with me batting frantically and ineffectually at Jerry. At one point, I raised the brush for yet another swipe, to find myself face-to-face with my prey as it had jumped on to the broom head!

Now white with fury, I redoubled my efforts, only to see mousey disappear behind the wardrobe. This was a Georgian behemoth of walnut, so large that it was built in three sections that screwed together.

Incensed, I leaned against one end in a futile attempt to move it. Bar the odd creak, it shifted not one millimetre. I neither saw nor heard further of the mouse until we moved two years later.

The Georgian monster was dismantled and there between sections two and three lay the fauna equivalent of a pressed flower. In leaning on the wardrobe, I had unwittingly flattened my quarry from 3D to 2D.

Spreadeagled, it looked for all the world like some cartoon character, but unlike the cartoons, it could not spring magically to life once more.

We did find a tennis racket and stiletto heel brilliant weapons against our tiny invaders.

Fast forward a dozen years. Fresh home from Germany, our first house in rural Norfolk, wife in hospital with firstborn imminent, cat Smoky putting the last few Xs on the wall of pussy prison as he served out his quarantine sentence.

I opened the cutlery drawer to be confronted with mouse droppings. Dirty mice and newborn babe are not a desirable mix and with Smoky in the choky, I had to solve the dilemma unaided.

The sink unit seemed to be the key area, but I could not find the entry point, even allowing that the india rubber bones of mice let them to squeeze through impossible gaps.

An immediate foray to the village shop for one small trap and one large Cheddar. I set the trap and retreated with the Daily Telegraph. Within minutes, a loud snap announced that spring had sprung.

Alas poor Yorick, exit one harvest mouse. Bending to retrieve the trap, I found a gap around the underside of the waste pipe which I swiftly plugged.

Mice have razor-sharp teeth and will chew practically anything, as a plaintive call from a friend with a classic Daimler was to reveal.

All my rear lights have stopped working, can you have a look?' I rapidly spotted four wires in the boot savaged by a mouse, but reconnection proved no cure. Opening the bonnet, I traced the wiring loom. The little divil had enjoyed an hors d'oeuvres of cotton braiding, an entre of nine plastic-covered copper wires, then followed the leads through the offside sill into the boot for dessert.

It could not have chosen a worse place to cut the loom and it took me two hours of delicate surgery to restore the SP250's electrical artery.

Our cats, despite single-handedly keeping up the profits of Whiskas and Iams, are inveterate hunters. We dread the trophy yowl in the wee small hours that heralds anything from the still quick but terrified to the I've eaten the lot bar the liver'.

My wife is a maestro at trapping the living in a cloth and putting them back in the field, even if one did reward her by sinking its fangs into her thumb.

The departed are no real problem, it's the extant that disappear because dear pussy has lost interest, or chase round the cottage with us trailing some way behind.

One evening, my two sons came to dinner and arrived just after Peaches let slip her prey. In a scene reminiscent of Monty Python, four grown people careered around the dining room in hot and totally ineffectual pursuit.

Genius had the answer - suck it up with the Vax! I switched on, my boys rousted the rodent from under the sideboard and I struck.

To be precise, I inadvertently jabbed the animal with the end of the pipe and broke its neck.

It is a dichotomy that a wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie' seems to have such a fond place in the world's heart.

Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Blundermouse (God, my age is showing), Beatrix Potter, to name but a few.

Not to mention Robert Thompson, the Mouseman of Kilburn, whose 1900s furniture sported a hand-carved mouse on every piece. The tradition lives on, with craftsmen faithfully adhering to those original designs.

Our favourite TV advert by a long chalk is Mr Mouse, the E-Sure character in probably the best commercial of the decade.

Our vehicles and our house are insured at mice's prices - strange, that.

C'mooon, give us a click!