There's a moose loose aboot this hoose.

There's a moose loose aboot this hoose is a cliché highlighting a Scottish dialect pronunciation, which came to mind around 2am this morning.  About half an hour earlier, my wife and I were disturbed by a tapping sound in the hall.  Noises in the night are not unusual for us because our two dogs and a cat often wander around and, for example, inspect their bowls and maybe chew at a biscuit for nocturnal comfort.  And of course it is Ramadan (known as Ramazan here in Turkey), so after dark is when the human species comes alive (not in our villa!) to break the fast.  So we often hear sounds from activities in the village.  But the tapping in the hall was different and it was coming from behind a large cabinet.  We decided to investigate and moved one corner of the unit away from the wall.  And there it was.  An over-fed mouse surrounded by a few doggie treats, obviously stolen from our canine family!

We had the mouse cornered, but what to do next?  Although it was an unwelcome guest, neither of us wanted to kill it but the same sentiment was probably not shared with our cat, DC.  He was asleep in another room, so we closed the door to prevent him from waking up and wanting to help!  We discussed tactics and decided we would attempt to coax the mouse into a container in order to remove it from our villa.  We positioned a pot where the cabinet had been moved away from the wall then tried to encourage the mouse to enter the 'transit lounge'.  But the plan failed when the mouse decided to squeeze through the gap at the other end of the cabinet.  It then scampered up the hall, through the lounge and into the kitchen, where it sought refuge behind the fridge-freezer.  We were now concerned that it would find its way to nearby fixed kitchen base units, which were not easily detachable from the wall.  So Plan B came into play.  We enlisted the support of a mop and a vacuum cleaner, the latter having a newly-fitted bag, which had, therefore, little pre-hoovered debris and plenty of space for a mouse.  We fitted the pipe attachment to the vacuum cleaner and we were ready for action.  I managed to coax the mouse from under the fridge-freezer and when it raced across the kitchen floor, caught it under the soft mop and then sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner into the bag.

Then what?  Well it seemed likely that a mouse that can gnaw its way through dog biscuits would soon do a Houdini trick and escape from the bag.  Our nearest rubbish bin is about 200 metres from the villa, so that's where I took it and my guess (and indeed hope) is that before sunrise it would have escaped to a nearby field.

My wife and I went to bed and were woken by the call to prayer at a local mosque about one hour later. It was an interesting night!