As some of you already know, for the last few weeks my apartment has been housing, beyond the friends who are always welcome, some other inhabitants who have settled in my flat without asking for my permission, and that have (unfortunately for me) found my house and whatever food it contains especially to their taste. Therefore, I should call them my house pets, since they have elected their residence in my "domus" (home).

Here is some news of my co-tenants to laugh a little at all this saga.

Supposed settlement date: the night of November 24, 2002 (hell: the dear little creatures never stop running, along the cold water tube I suppose. I thought I was having a terrifying nightmare as I had been working too hard lately... sometimes things are a lot simpler; -) yet more difficult to guess at!

First suspicion: December 2 (I had just come home after Chicca and Claudio's wedding). After a short investigation, I discovered that my neighbours living on the ground floor had caught two of them in the cellar a week before (a little and... a big rat! Apparently, only mice squat my flat, and it is a great comfort to me already! But how can I be quite sure?).

I first spotted a mouse on December 3: I can more artful than them, if I try hard, and I did see one. A pretty small ball of grey-brown-black hairs: it ran so quickly that I suddenly realized that:

A - either I move too slowly (well, I recognize it is a bit true)

B - or the story about killing mice with brooms is a metropolitan legend (I am rather in for the second). I think to myself that I will soon get rid of MY mouse in the singular."

From December 3, war is officially declared. Armed with rat-killing poison, my mind bent only on revenge on the dear little creatures that poison my nights, I spread almost everywhere small heaps of fluorescent-red seeds where I know they squat. My secret dream (or rather my pet illusion): the idea that in two or three days the poison will rid me of my too loud "co-tenants". Reality is rather different: my mice (are they mutant?! what was there in the attic where they lived before?...) just love eating poison and always ask for more! My obsession: find myself dressed in rags preparing some soup for my "rats" in an enormous cauldron, surrounded by those hungry beasts... okay, as my Greek teacher once said to me: "Sometimes, too much reading is bad for your health!"

(It comes from a short story by Dino Buzzati I read once; my PhD professor told me another, a funnier one, by Montale, before offering to accommodate me in the now empty flat that was his daughter's). But no one will ever say that I have been sent out of my house by mice: I made up my mind I'd stay and change tactics.

Second act: on December 4, Eloisa offered me two wonderful and brand new mousetraps. Thanks to Roland's providential intervention, the two unfit weapons that had several times jeopardized the survival of my fingers until then, by strongly refusing to remain open as long as was necessary to catch a mouse, finally work. But mice are not stupid and guess it's a trap, in spite of the bit of delicious Comté cheese I have put on it in order to attract them. The sentence of the week: "If it goes on like that, I am going to crazy before long! "

During the Immaculate Conception (December 8) weekend, my friend Francy and I one evening counted 6 mouse muzzles sticking out of the wall and coming to eat some poison, with a very satisfied air: It is the end of my illusion that there is "just a single mouse" in the house. There is not any more doubt, my mice are abundantly plural! On Sunday night, Francy dreams that one of the mice has bitten her: without any consequences evidently, except that she wakes up with a start at 4 o'clock in the morning... just as I do at the other end of the room! Her husband, who slept next to her, didn't hear anything and went on sleeping peacefully until next morning.

Some days in Paris (thank you Delphine) are the best medicine! When I come back home in Lyons on December 13 I am ready for the third act. In Paris my mother has offered me two tubes of rat glue, I spread it almost everywhere I suppose that mice pass and hold their banquets. After a first night without results, on Saturday December 14 I finally catch my first two mice (I omit the details about how I came to kill them). On Sunday morning, while getting out of my shower-box, I notice a mouse, very much alive, in the bathroom... unhappily for it, it didn't stay alive for a long time after that and finished its race half an hour later on a sticky rat-glued cardboard. 3-0 for me.

In the evening that same day, I was on the phone with Elena when a mouse finally fell in a mousetrap. Elena kindly allowed me to call her back after killing my fourth victim... and as I was fully engaged in the horrid act, Veronica phoned me too. I don't dare imagine what she must have thought when, after a hasty "Hi!", I asked her: "Could you please call back in ten minutes, I am killing a mouse right now."

And finally Christmas came and I went home on holiday: the mice had the opportunity of taking control of the whole place again and became more daring and less watchful than usual. When I came back on January 2, I found two of them glued dead. I would have preferred to kill them myself, the house wouldn't have smelled so bad... but all is clean, disinfected and fragrant now. The number of mice fallen on the battlefield is the same as what Francy had counted... 6-0 for me: I reckon that the occupation has come to an end at last! Well, I thought it was...

THE END!

Yet... yesterday morning, January 5, I discovered new and unmistakable traces on the stove and on my oil tin... is this the fourth act? Or a new beginning??? My neighbour Sandrine, who lives next door, has just told me that she has found some traces of mouse in her flat too, and in three different places! Maybe my mice have just gone on holiday for some time to my neighbour's? Is this a never-ending story?

I don't know when and if I can put a real "THE END" to this saga... except on the day I move out of the flat, of course. I will keep you thoroughly informed about mice and the rest.