Nature doesn't want me to sleep

I decided tonight to do this thing called being an adult, which is apparently quite popular nowadays, and went to bed at a (shock, horror) reasonable time. I sort of faded back into consciousness after a while of being asleep, and heard a rustling on the desk beside the bed. Odd... maybe it's the curtain brushing aginst the chocolate... turn the light on: nope, it's a mouse.

The grey thing rushes down onto my bed and under it. I get up, in shock and resignation.

I try to rearrange things a bit so that I can catch it. No dice. The thing moves so quickly, I feel a little bit like I'm playing a video game with a character with incredibly low speed, and I am just getting darted from left to right to centre: even when I try to be smart and predict its moves I find out that actually it's even quicker than my predictions, and I'm outstripped again.

I end up getting it to go away from the desk, and instead move towards the chest of drawers at the back. I keep the door locked so it can't escape (just me and the mouse, together, alone) and try to trap it in a bit, etc. Again doesn't work. I move out most of the items from the floor and chuck them onto the bed (which is hardly even looking like a bed at this point) so it's a bit easier for my visibility.

Eventually, I managed to lure the little terror into one position with a bit of ginger nut biscuit (not an advertisement, but they are clearly very pleasant, as I had about four with my tea earlier and this mouse has had god-knows-how-many) and then scare it away into the corner of the room, locked in to the right by the chest of drawers. I block its exit with an old photo frame and the book I'm currently reading, Retrieving Nicaea (I wonder if Athanasius ever had to capture a mouse at gone midnight) and then... wait, it's disappeared! How?

I check the other side of the chest of drawers just to make sure it hasn't escaped, but there isn't really enough room for it to make it through behind, and I can't see it...

Hold on. Left in the little section I've trapped it is a roll of (I think) old flooring. I wonder, if I lift it up...

It had climbed into the tube of flooring.

Gotcha!

I keep the tube upright, slowly move it out of the corner and to where there is a bit of room (feeling a little bad as the mouse's tail kept getting stuck under the edge), then slipped a very thin book ("Sea and sky in watercolour", by Arnold Lowrey) under the tube and carried it away, chucking it out. It scampered away posthaste.

So, all done. The problem is, I now have to worry about whether that was the only one. And if it won't return. I'm sort of a bit paranoid that every little rustle or squeak or anything I hear could be another mouse coming to eat my chocolate. For what it's worth, I'm going to chuck that chocolate now, because I don't know where and how much of it the little bugger has been nibbling away at.

So much for me getting a good night's sleep. Nature clearly doesn't want me to sleep.

ps. And, as I go to check my RSS feed now, what is the first post I see? This, with some woolly mice. Oh, the world is both cruel and hilarious sometimes.