"Have you met the mouse?"

Prior to arriving in Amsterdam, I was told there was a bread-eating mouse sharing accommodations with us.  Let it be said that I have a soft spot for most furry creatures, but I am not a proponent of bubonic plague, hantavirus, or things that eat my rosemary-hazelnut artisan bread loaves and leave their poop all over the kitchen counter.  So it was that I put on my Jim Corbett shikar hat and went looking for sign.  Here's some:

 
And here:
 

And here:

With this evidence, I loaded a trap with irresistibly tasty Dutch natural peanut butter and slid it veeerrrrry carefully around the corner of the dishwasher, next to the split-level trio of cardboard boxes we believe the mouse has established as its fortress.  That was a week ago.  Maybe the mouse prefers Gouda (let's practice saying "HOW-duh"), of which we have a considerable quantity, but would never dream of disgracing by using as rodent bait. 

Anyway, I hadn't found any mouse sign in the kitchen for several days, which made me think maybe the mouse had sensed peril and moved on to the koffie salon downstairs, where croissant crumbs abound.  I relaxed enough to permit myself to sit on the sofa and settle into a webinar called "Frack or Fiction," given by a Yale hydrology professor.  I was learning a ton about "wet gas" and "dry gas" and permitting and landmen and leasing and lateral drilling and the fact that methane was found in 24% of one Pennsylvania county's municipal water systems BEFORE fracking began and all sorts of interesting things.

Then I looked up and saw a tiny brown mouse running along the floorboard of the living room.  And then it ran under the sofa.  And then I shut my computer and scurried to bed.  There may have been a yelp.  So now, I've met the mouse. 

Time to go outside! 

"Reading" Dutch ducks... in front of the Dutch ducks.