Rodney the Recluse Rodent

Rodney Grey Rodent, is a mouse. He lives in a hole in the brick wall behind the toilet, in the bathroom, at the back of our building. The building is on the busy corner of Green Street and Jefferson Street, in the center of our beautiful town of Mount Perry, Florida. There are really only two things Lyudmila and I find particularly disturbing about this arrangement. 1) Rodney puts in an appearance at the most inopportune times. and 2) Rodney has a great number of friends and family who come to call, then decide to stay. The other day for instance, a lady customer asked to use the facilities. Once the lady was comfortably and quietly settled, you know who decided it would be a great time to check out the bathroom floor. As you might have guessed pandemonium instantly broke out in the bathroom. The lady already having climbed onto the toilet, apparently attempted to climb to the top of the water tank which supplied water to the toilet. This caused the tank to break away from the two little mounting bolts which secured the tank to the top of toilet itself. The resulting flood caused Rodney to seek higher ground. The rest of his family and friends also concerned for their safety, emerged from the hole in back of the toilet and began trying to find higher ground themselves. About this time the lady who was still scrambling for the high ground herself, must have stepped on the toilet’s water supply line. The line broke free of the water level control valve in the toilet tank. As the water supply line is a flexible plastic hose like affair, it began to whip about because of the water pressure. It behaved very much like an unattended fire hose. Now water sprayed freely from ceiling to wall in rapid succession as the broken hose whipped back and forth soaking everything in the small bathroom. The panic stricken lady continued to try for higher ground to get away from the terrified mice. The poor little mice were swimming for their lives in the water on the floor. They were also trying their best to find something they could climb up on to get out of the water. Our hot water heater sits on a shelf up over the toilet. This was apparently one of the places the frantic lady tried to claw her way up to. Unfortunately, the shelf was not strong enough for the combined weight of the lady and the hot water heater full of water. It collapsed with a mighty crash. As it collapsed it broke the sewer line which carries waste water from our apartment up over the store. Fortunately, there was no one up stairs to make any waste water but the sewer smell was now allowed to enter the interior of the building instead of being vented up through the roof. There wasn’t enough hot water in the tank to do any more harm then to further saturate the floor as the supply pipes broke. Unfortunately, for the lady, there was also a 220 volt electrical service which also broke away from the tank as it fell. This now hung just a few feet over the wet floor. The lady must have become entangled in the electrical line because the screeching and crashing about increased in volume until the circuit breaker tripped. Unfortunately, the light circuit was on the same circuit as the water heater. The bathroom was now plunged into complete and total darkness as there was no window in the bathroom. The lady, still in a panic over the mice, water, smell, dark and electrical shocks, attempted to leave the bathroom but forgot the door swung inward instead of out. In the dark she was also trying to push it open from the hinged side of the door. One other note worthy fact is there is no knob on the inside of the door. One must grab a small door hook to pull the door open but in the dark she obviously couldn’t find it. Lyudmila and I, on hearing the commotion, raced to the bathroom to help the panic stricken lady. Unfortunately, with her wedged between the door and the bathroom sink she was able to exert a lot more force holding the door closed than we could to push it open. We tried to tell her the door opened inward and she had to get out of the way before we could get it open for her but in her panic, she heard nothing. About this time she must have tried to climb up on the bathroom sink which was only mounted to the wall with two small bolts stuck in the brick wall. There was another awful crash followed by the sound of even more water splashing about in there. The water now flowed freely from under the bathroom door as the lady struggled even harder to push the door open. Lyudmila and I stared at each other a moment or so wondering what would happen next. Suddenly there was an even wilder scream than the rest and we backed away from the bathroom door. The lady, using a super human burst of strength pushed the door, frame and all out of the wall and charged past us like a raging rhinoceros. As she went by us we noted she had obviously become entangled with the door frame as she came through it. She was dragging parts of the broken door frame behind her. The poor woman was soaked to the skin, her hair hung down in long rivulets from the top of her head and her make up had partially washed from her face. This gave her a rather surrealistic look. There was a large quantity of wet toilet paper stuck to her left foot and her panties dragged along behind hooked to her right foot. Last but not least, there was Rodney and some of his buddies hanging onto her rather ample rump for dear life. We followed her to the front of the store and out to the street. We couldn’t help but wonder if she had any idea of just what she looked like to the residents of our peaceful little town, as she charged from the front door of our shop. She was screaming like a wild woman, about how she was being attacked by hundreds of wild mice and she looked like a refugee from a horror show. We watched in stunned silence as the screaming lady, still dragging panties, toilet paper and parts of our door frame, disappeared around the corner about a block away. Rodney Grey Rodent and several others were still firmly attached to her rump. What else could we do?