大象传媒

Unexpectedly joined by animal life in his car, Ray Lyon kept cool ...

Ray was travelling to work on a fast section of road which opened into three lanes to allow people to overtake. Suddenly Ray had a peculiar sensation, "I had this feeling that a dog was trying to overtake me. Instead of looking round, my first instinct was to look down at the speedometer. I was doing at least 50 mph. I thought, 'It must be a greyhound!'" What was happening did involve an animal, but not a dog. Ray says, "Instead of a dog, overtaking me on the outside of the car, it was a mouse sat on the windowsill on the inside of the car." As Ray turned, the mouse lept from the window onto his right shoulder scuttled across his chest, down to his thigh, along his thigh before diving into the well of his car. As quickly as he could, Ray pulled over. Crawling around trying to find it, he realised, "The mouse could be anywhere, inside the seats, back in the engine compartment, so I thought the only solution was to tuck my trousers into socks and continue my journey."

Ray鈥檚 returned home, with his trousers well-tucked in against the errant mouse. In the hope of dealing humanely with the situation, he left his car in his garage with the door open and a plank leading to the ground as a hint that the mouse should leave. After a few days, Ray, thinking the mouse had gone, confidently untucked his trousers from his socks and started on his journey, when, "The mouse leapt out and hit me on the shin, and I realised it was still around. At that point I thought I can鈥檛 live with this mouse in the car. Enough is enough. I bought a trap. The next morning I went to the car, and there it was - dead. And that is the end of the mouse story!"

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