Quietude

Whenever I’ve visited the chalet at Chiny, there’s always a problem that arises not long after arriving. Normally it’s some sort of “giant” spider problem — Giant by Belgian standards, perhaps — resolvable easily in my Mum’s style of grabbing the vacuum cleaner; however this time the problem was somewhat larger, hairier, and faster.

Around two years ago upon one of several arrivals at the chalet we found a group of mice hiding out in a cupboard full of bedding accoutrements, panicking that they had been discovered. We found that they had entered in through a hole, left from the removal of some plumbing behind the fridge in the kitchen, and had spent considerable time working their way through the remnants within the pantry while living it up in their exclusive furnished apartment.

At that point in time I had no experience with rodent removal, other than that of my cousins at my family’s holiday house in Blairgowrie. There we had a pretty nasty rat problem during the 1980s; however the cousins were very keen on setting traps to kill them off.

There was no clear method of trapping these Ardennais rodents, and when it appeared to me just how fast the little buggers can run, the obvious method of grabbing the vacuum cleaner came up. After catching two, we checked the bag and found two field mice with severe head trauma. This probably wasn’t the best idea. To this day I still feel a little guilty about not thinking what would happen to a small mouse travelling at high velocity through a tube towards a plastic wall.

In any case, at least four of their relatives had taken the decision to recreate the hole in the kitchen and take up residence in their ancestral lodging. Needless to say, they were somewhat upset with us when we disturbed them on Thursday. Once again we had to some how “humanely” remove them from the room, so we started to remove everything possible through the window, meticulously checking to see what’s been “renovated” by the mice.

Follow on from the most successful technique I learnt previously in that room, I grabbed a Tupperware container that perhaps the previous occupants should have used to seal their half-finished chocolate, and I proceeded to chase them into open areas of the room in order to trap them in the same manner as Mouse Trap, yet in a significantly less Rube Goldberg style.

I am convinced that mice are very intelligent creatures. Along with their ability to squeeze into tight spots, they have an amazing ability to find excellent hiding places. Years ago I discovered this when one had decided to climb up under a sink within the bedroom and hide itself within the surrounding porcelain under a tap, holding itself in place like a rock-climber chimneying. The skill at which the mice find places to hide in a mostly bare room amazes me, and they deserve a lot of credit for their creativity.

In the end though, one was hiding in a bag that was being removed from the room, another jumped straight into a garbage bag allowing for easy removal through the window, and the other two were trapped until they could be removed. Cheeky buggers!

Finally the relaxation could begin, but not without a call from the office about a problem. The difficulty about being in the sticks is that the Internet isn’t really readily available as it is within the cities, although my E70 gives me excellent GPRS coverage in Chiny on BASE that isn’t particularly useful when you forget both the USB cable and the Bluetooth dongle. Furthermore, the phone line in the chalet was disconnected.

The ultimate solution involved using John’s phone, which had no GPRS, to dial-up to the Internet, since he brought his laptop, Motorola phone and the data cable. This wasn’t without incident, as I obviously didn’t have the drivers for his phone, so we arranged a way of poaching the drivers from his system and installing them in a very round-about way on mine in order to VPN to the office. What a mess, given the 9600kbps connection with 60% packet loss and the ~4000ms latency — very reminiscent of the Internet stone age!

Before we knew it the sun had set and after some fantastic pizzas from Le Relais des Oliviers in Florenville the evening was basically over.

I arose on Friday after a long sleep-in to some spectacular scenery with every intention of having a slow day. In fact, nothing eventful happened during the day other than the arrival of the overworked and underpaid Liz, who wasn’t able to take the day off between the public holiday and the weekend.

I had planned on going cycling yesterday along the picturesque Semois with whoever was willing to come, however it was quickly discovered that both Saturday and Sunday were designated days for hunting bore and deer, so the trails were closed. Liz and John held the fort while Aline and I headed out for a cycle that was well a truly put to death once it was discovered that hunting seasons essentially meant the only places to cycle were 60%-grades.

Casual mountain-biking during hunting season is probably a bad idea.

Finally the clouds broke last night allowing an unpolluted view of the night sky, allowing for spectacular visibility of the Milky Way. Mars was prominently visible last night, and although it was bright orange and wandering like a planet would, John gave us final confirmation using the beautifully constructed open-source program Stellarium. Being from the Southern Hemisphere, the stars look quite wrong to an Australian eye!

The weekend was wonderfully relaxing (despite the interruptions) although unfortunately I’m not entirely sure how quickly the effect will last. Either way, I finally got to visit the cute yet inanimate Wierde on the way home!