I don’t mean we are exuberantly loving life, throwing caution to the wind and throwing a roof-raising party during office hours.
We aren’t “out on the town” enjoying the views at some of Springs’ more salacious hangouts.
We aren’t even braaing up a storm (in the rain) at someone’s house.
No, dear readers, we are literally being carried away by the critters who have nested, roosted, taken up residence and generally made themselves at home in our offices.
Noticing that our offices are far too big for the 13 of us, every manner of critter – be they on four, six, eight or (in some instances) no legs have come marching in – and not two by two but rather 2 000 by 2 000.
Well, I may be exaggerating but it certainly feels that way.
Slowly we are being edged out of our surroundings as they initiate their take-over bid to infiltrate our space.
We have tried to deter their advances – starting with the blue pools of mouse poison in 2012 – but these blighters are having none of it.
When I arrived at the Addie I was made aware that we might have a mouse – singular.
Every now and then we would see Mickey scuttle across the office. But he seemed a solitary fella and wasn’t doing too much harm so we left him to his own ministrations and carried on in peaceful co-existence.
Months later, and having given Mickey scarcely a thought, one of our journalists Ernest Wolmarans declared Mickey had left the building.
Ernest had found him nestled in his car’s engine when he arrive home the previous afternoon.
Not minutes after this proclamation had been made and our office declared mouse-free I spied, with my beady eye, a very fat mouse scurrying across my newsroom.
Obviously Ernest has played taxi to Mickey’s cousin because Mickey was still with us. However, the larger issue was that either Mickey had company or he was in fact of the Minnie variety.
And there were clearly babies on the way!
Still we lived in blind hope that the Mouse family would stay out of our way.
We did, however, (readers of the environmentalist type should close their eyes here) put down a bucket load of blue poison which I was assured would sort the problem out “right quick”.
It did not and Mickey, Minnie and their thousands of babies remained residents.
We continued life, unfazed and co-existing.
However, things have become serious as we have graduated from a small mouse family to a veritable menagerie of undesirables – including ants, termites, paper fleas and our new addition this morning, the cockroaches – and each and every one of them refuses to relocate or die!
We have tried to reclaim our territory but it has all been for naught. Hence the declaration that we are certainly in danger of being carried, bodily, away kicking and screaming and begging for our lives, much like Gulliver when the Lilliputians got their hands on him.
To date we have:
- tried to eliminate the mice with said blue poison – they live on in the comfort of one of the cupboards;
- like amateurs, we sprayed a whiff of doom at the ants. They laughed audibly and lifted their arms daring us to scent their armpits with our lavender doom deodorant.
- Next we attempted to rise to the challenge, letting off a barrage of insecticide foggers which I had been assured would do the trick – it did not. Instead it angered the ants. They gathered their armies from across Springs and the East Rand and attacked with new vigor.
- Having failed to eliminate even one ant, we stared in abject horror as the foggers merely encouraged the paper fleas to come out to play, rather than lie down and die.
- Finally we have drilled holes into the foundations of the building and pumped some foul-smelling concoction in to encourage the termites to vacate the premises.
Thus far, none of these actions has helped in the least. We are, however, living in hope that our final assault will not be seen by the termites as a challenge to double their efforts to bring the building down around our ears.
While our critters enjoy the high life getting fat, some of them literally off the building, we are left defeated, despondent and disillusioned.
Meanwhile, our cleaning lady can be seen attacking the offices with chemical grade detergents which should really be used only when wearing a gas mask and protective gear approved for Chernobyl, muttering to herself and possibly going slowly insane as she tries to scrub the office to a pristine gleam while facing the certainty that we are surely beaten and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.
