A classic(al) tale of mice and men

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This article was published 09/03/2019 (2698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In an attempt to appeal to a more high-brow audience, today’s informative and entertaining column is going to be about classical music.

If I am going to be completely honest, I will admit up front there is also a mouse in it, but allow me to stress this mouse was not in my house and it is only significant in the sense that it became — how can I put this — entwined with an instrument vital to the production of classical music.

For those of you who are not as erudite as myself, classical music is the sort of music that you hear in elementary school when your Grade 5 class takes a field trip to the local symphony. It is also the kind of music typically played on speakers outside convenience stores to deter riff-raff from hanging around in the parking lot.

As for mice, I am pleased to announce that my famously infested house has been mouse-free all winter, with the lone exception of a rogue rodent that ran out from under my computer desk as I was compiling a column back in November.

In that case, I chased the (bad word) mouse around the house, then sat down to write, then resumed chasing, then went back to writing and this back and forth continued all day until my wife arrived home from work, set a trap in a kitchen cupboard, walked out of the room and seconds later — SNAP! — the elusive rodent met his doom.

The point is I did not have mice or classical music on my mind until earlier this week when I wandered into Mona Lisa Ristorante on Corydon Avenue for a semi-regular lunch with a bunch of the old guys from my graduating class at St. Paul’s High School back in the 1970s.

We like to meet every other month to compare wrinkles, reassure each other we are still, in fact, alive, and to determine whether we can remember our children’s names, along with our ATM passwords.

As we stuffed our faces with Italian food, one of my old classmates turned to me and asked: “So how’s the mouse invasion going?”

This happens to me a lot. I will be standing in the liquor store or grocery store or some random location and someone will wander over, gently place their hand on my shoulder and, in the tone of voice you would use speaking to someone whose family has just been consumed by wolverines, ask whether I am still besieged by unwanted house guests.

Anyway, I explained that I had not seen a mouse in months, which is when another one of my old friends leaned back in his chair and proudly declared: “I had a mouse!” He then explained how he had been doing something in his kitchen when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a furry grey streak darting by.

I am not going to tell you the name of my buddy, but I will say that he is an extremely accomplished and well-known local musician who, along with a mouse, also had a cello in his house, which is where the whole classical music thing comes in.

Again, for those of you who are not as sophisticated as myself, the cello is vital to the production of classical music in the sense that it is one of the largest stringed instruments in a modern symphony orchestra and resembles a violin on steroids.

What happened was my talented musician friend was in bed one night while his beloved cello was resting in the corner inside its zippered case.

Which is when — and, yes, this was suddenly and without warning — he was jolted awake by an extremely unexpected sound.

“It was a ‘SPRONG! SPRONG!’ noise,” he told us as we feasted on pasta.

“I bolted upright and a terrifying thought popped into my brain — THERE’S A MOUSE IN MY CELLO!”

I am not an expert in the care and maintenance of symphonic instruments, but I am pretty sure that having a small creature with the ability to gnaw through drywall inside your cello is not a good thing.

So my friend bravely leaped out of bed, raced over to his cello and determined that the zipper on the carrying bag was open just enough to allow entry for a music-loving mouse.

This was a delicate moment. How, you might ask, does one go about removing a mouse from an extremely sensitive instrument without resorting to the time-honoured technique of smashing it against the wall?

What my friend did was scoop up the cello in its case, carry it at maximum waddling speed outside his house, then bravely stand on the front porch, wearing only his boxer-briefs as protection from the cold.

“I’m standing there, hoping my neighbours aren’t watching, shaking the cello over my head and hoping the mouse falls out,” he recalled as I tried to imagine the scene without snorting rigatoni out of my nose.

He never actually saw the mouse plummet from the instrument, but, after a quick inspection, declared the all-clear and he and his beloved cello went back to bed.

Later that night, I shared this story with my wife, who laughed until I thought she was going to have an accident on the carpet. Which is when I looked at her and asked: “Do you know a better way to get a mouse out of a cello?”

“No,” she replied after a brief pause.

“But if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca