Moussehold chores

Mouse secretly filmed tidying man’s shed every night | Animals | The Guardian

Mouse secretly filmed tidying man’s shed every night

Mouse filmed tidying up man's shed every night - YouTube

Photographer who noticed his items were mysteriously moving around discovered an industrious rodent was organising his workbench

Charlie Moloney
Sun 7 Jan 2024 20.33 GMTA mouse has been filmed secretly tidying up a man’s shed almost every night for two months.

Wildlife photographer Rodney Holbrook noticed that objects he left out of place were being mysteriously put back where they belonged overnight.

Holbrook, from Builth Wells in Powys, Wales, set up a night vision camera on his workbench to find out what was happening, and captured footage reminiscent of the 2007 animated movie Ratatouille, where a rodent secretly cooks at a restaurant.
Holbrook, 75, told the BBC: “It has been going on for months. I call him Welsh Tidy Mouse. At first, I noticed that some food that I was putting out for the birds was ending up in some old shoes I was storing in the shed, so I set up a camera.”

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Rodney Holbrook was baffled by what was happening, so he set up a camera. Photograph: Animal News AgencyNight vision footage showed the seemingly conscientious rodent gathering clothes pegs, corks, nuts and bolts, and placing them in a tray on Holbrook’s workbench.
Holbrook even experimented with leaving out different objects to see if the mouse could lift them, but the creature was undeterred and was even seen carrying cable ties to the pot.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw that the mouse was tidying up,” Holbrook said.
“He moved all sorts of things into the box, bits of plastic, nuts and bolts. I don’t bother to tidy up now, as I know he will see to it. I leave things out of the box and they put it back in its place by the morning. Ninety-nine times out of 100 the mouse will tidy up throughout the night.”
A similar incident occurred in 2019, when a viral video showed a mouse “stockpiling” items in a man’s shed near Bristol.
Steve Mckears told reporters he thought he “was going mad” when screws and metal objects kept reappearing in a box containing bird feed. He set up a camera and captured footage of the mouse putting screws and other metal objects in the container.