Mouse secretly filmed tidying man’s shed every night.
January 7, 2024 11:53 PM Subscribe
No lie. This Guardian story has a link to his footage.
Minnie Kondo, says the Guardian front page.
posted by Klipspringer at 12:07 AM on January 8 [12 favorites]
posted by Klipspringer at 12:07 AM on January 8 [12 favorites]
This is great!
posted by Bella Donna at 12:30 AM on January 8
posted by Bella Donna at 12:30 AM on January 8
The sentence structure made me think it was the mouse doing the filming, having secretly setup a camera. (I guess it would be “mouse films” in that case).
posted by mrzarquon at 12:44 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]
posted by mrzarquon at 12:44 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]
"put like things together" was a huge step in the creation of the universe and also cubbies and shelves which has led to nooks and later reading nooks. these are all good things which shows that organization is good so fold your socks.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 12:52 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
posted by MonsieurPEB at 12:52 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
Okay I believe Cinderella now
posted by Mizu at 1:03 AM on January 8 [8 favorites]
posted by Mizu at 1:03 AM on January 8 [8 favorites]
Charming as the footage itself is here, I'm also curious about what the mouse thinks it's doing and why. My best guess is that it might be related to some kind of nesting behaviour, but I've got no idea if that's plausible or not.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:36 AM on January 8 [8 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:36 AM on January 8 [8 favorites]
I came here to post this too - it's a lovely bit of weird animal intrusion into everyday life. I believe we have a mouse expert on MeFi who may have some thoughts on this.
posted by paduasoy at 1:56 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]
posted by paduasoy at 1:56 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]
Also, could be ghostly influence, or a Rats-of-NIMH scenario, or the guy secretly has a fairy godmother, or the objects have a natural place and the mouse is just a conduit for the force that puts them there, or the mouse has an obsessive-compulsive disorder, or its expecting friends over, or it's really the mouse's workbench, wonders why its things keep getting put out of place every day, and is considering putting up a camera to find out why.
posted by JHarris at 1:56 AM on January 8 [14 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 1:56 AM on January 8 [14 favorites]
There's a saying in Danish, "når katten er ude, danser musene på bordet" which means "when the cat's away, the mice dance on the table". How is it supposed to dance on a table littered with mess? It's clearly just clearing space to fulfil its proverbial tasks.
posted by Dysk at 1:57 AM on January 8 [33 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 1:57 AM on January 8 [33 favorites]
I feel like this could explain some of the origin of "brownie"-type myths, if it's been going on for a long time (it must have been happening for many hundreds of years without being observed/recorded). There are stories about tiny creatures (usually a type of elf/fairy/pixie) who work overnight and don't wish to be observed (or, sometimes, thanked). In some of the stories, the creature performs a task -- repairs shoes, things like that -- but in some they just do tidying.
It's not really hard to imagine that the stories could have grown from craftspeople waking up in the morning to find their workspace tidier than they left it thanks to this kind of mouse behavior.
posted by verbminx at 3:09 AM on January 8 [31 favorites]
It's not really hard to imagine that the stories could have grown from craftspeople waking up in the morning to find their workspace tidier than they left it thanks to this kind of mouse behavior.
posted by verbminx at 3:09 AM on January 8 [31 favorites]
The Guardian footage also suggests the mouse is capable of teleportation.Talk about burying the lede...
posted by Paul Slade at 3:34 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 3:34 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
Wot, no Beatrix Potter reference? If this had been in the Daily Telegraph they totally would have led with a reference to Hunca Munca.
posted by rory at 3:43 AM on January 8
posted by rory at 3:43 AM on January 8
Reveals another dimension to the ancient enmity of cat vs. mouse: chaos agent vs control vector.
posted by notyou at 5:02 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
posted by notyou at 5:02 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
I've just heard the shed's owner discussing this on the radio. He said there were nuts left in that tray, and thinks the mouse is covering them so no other mouse can find and eat them. Sounds reasonable to me.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:27 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 6:27 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]
When actual, literal vermin are tidying up after you, it might be an indication that you're an enormous slob
posted by phooky at 6:29 AM on January 8 [7 favorites]
posted by phooky at 6:29 AM on January 8 [7 favorites]
Wot, no Beatrix Potter reference? If this had been in the Daily Telegraph they totally would have led with a reference to Hunca Munca.
Funny, my mind went to the Tailor of Gloucester but Hunca Munca also works
posted by dismas at 6:57 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
Funny, my mind went to the Tailor of Gloucester but Hunca Munca also works
posted by dismas at 6:57 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]
NO MORE TWIST
posted by dismas at 6:57 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
posted by dismas at 6:57 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
What a delightful and whimsical way to contract hantavirus!
posted by mittens at 7:12 AM on January 8 [9 favorites]
posted by mittens at 7:12 AM on January 8 [9 favorites]
My Welsh bride says the repeated use of the word "tidy" ("Welsh Tidy Mouse") is the most Welsh thing she's heard in a while.
posted by doctornemo at 7:19 AM on January 8 [9 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 7:19 AM on January 8 [9 favorites]
Right, I have been summoned...
First thought, looking at that video: that is no house mouse. Not only is the head wrong--too narrow at the back, eyes are a bit big--but that very clear countershading is not something you generally see on wild house mice. So what kind of mouse is it? If this was in the US, I would assume it was a Peromyscus (deer mouse) species, which often gleefully invade our homes, but do they have Peromyscus in Wales? In North America, this is relevant because deer mouse species often have very elaborated burrowing and pair bonding systems, and this looks like nesting behavior off the top of my head. What sort of mouse is this?
The Woodland UK Trust suggests that this is probably a wood (or field) mouse: Apodemus sylvaticus. (There are glorious big photos there which can help you see what I mean.) Okay, I don't know that much about Apodemus spp. behavior, so what do we know about their nesting behavior?
Well, I chased a couple of false leads, then circled back to find out what is notable about wood mice, which is that they are known to not only navigate by the use of landmarks, but to organize their environments to place small objects around their environments in order to make navigation and orienting themselves across their large territories more effectively! So this mouse is probably irritably putting things back in place as an aid to its own memory of where everything is and where it can most effectively pilfer snacks, nest locations, or other useful mouse items within its environment. That is, the mouse wants a tidy shed for exactly the same reasons a human might want a tidy shed: so it can find things it's looking for when it wants to!
Wood mice, by the way, are human commensals and quite common in Europe and the British Isles, so this is in no way a refutation of the idea that this behavior might have influenced human folklore and ideas about house spirits or similar. Certainly wood mice, like any mouse, are unlikely to turn up a bowl of milk if there's one put out for it--although neither are house cats, which would certainly prey on them.
posted by sciatrix at 9:17 AM on January 8 [91 favorites]
First thought, looking at that video: that is no house mouse. Not only is the head wrong--too narrow at the back, eyes are a bit big--but that very clear countershading is not something you generally see on wild house mice. So what kind of mouse is it? If this was in the US, I would assume it was a Peromyscus (deer mouse) species, which often gleefully invade our homes, but do they have Peromyscus in Wales? In North America, this is relevant because deer mouse species often have very elaborated burrowing and pair bonding systems, and this looks like nesting behavior off the top of my head. What sort of mouse is this?
The Woodland UK Trust suggests that this is probably a wood (or field) mouse: Apodemus sylvaticus. (There are glorious big photos there which can help you see what I mean.) Okay, I don't know that much about Apodemus spp. behavior, so what do we know about their nesting behavior?
Well, I chased a couple of false leads, then circled back to find out what is notable about wood mice, which is that they are known to not only navigate by the use of landmarks, but to organize their environments to place small objects around their environments in order to make navigation and orienting themselves across their large territories more effectively! So this mouse is probably irritably putting things back in place as an aid to its own memory of where everything is and where it can most effectively pilfer snacks, nest locations, or other useful mouse items within its environment. That is, the mouse wants a tidy shed for exactly the same reasons a human might want a tidy shed: so it can find things it's looking for when it wants to!
Wood mice, by the way, are human commensals and quite common in Europe and the British Isles, so this is in no way a refutation of the idea that this behavior might have influenced human folklore and ideas about house spirits or similar. Certainly wood mice, like any mouse, are unlikely to turn up a bowl of milk if there's one put out for it--although neither are house cats, which would certainly prey on them.
posted by sciatrix at 9:17 AM on January 8 [91 favorites]
All they've ever done for me is merrily shit all over every flat surface and occasionally die behind a heavy appliance and / or inside a plaster wall. To say I feel cheated would be putting it mildly.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:59 AM on January 8 [16 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 11:59 AM on January 8 [16 favorites]
And then there's my cat, knocking things away from sensible spots and disappearing them. I should get a mouse ...?
posted by Xere at 6:25 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]
posted by Xere at 6:25 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]
And then there's my cat, knocking things away from sensible spots and disappearing them.
You thought the cat was just being perverse, but it was cleverly baiting OCD mice.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:22 AM on January 9 [5 favorites]
You thought the cat was just being perverse, but it was cleverly baiting OCD mice.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:22 AM on January 9 [5 favorites]
Love the tidying mouse video? Here are the greatest mice in art [Guardian / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 11:00 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]
posted by ellieBOA at 11:00 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]
Mod note: A bunch of mice helped us add this post and sciatrix's comment to the Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:20 PM on January 9 [8 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:20 PM on January 9 [8 favorites]
What a delightful and whimsical way to contract hantavirus!
I laughed so hard reading this after reading the AAM hoarder story.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:54 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]
I laughed so hard reading this after reading the AAM hoarder story.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:54 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]
I shared the same comment on my Tumblr, where a number of people have expressed similar thoughts to verbminx's musings about the origin of Brownie folklore. Someone commented that brownies would not stay in a home where there was a cat. I haven't been able to verify this elsewhere, but I thought I'd share the notion anyway.
posted by sciatrix at 11:29 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]
posted by sciatrix at 11:29 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]
There's an old idea in Brownie folklore that you should leave out a dish of milk or cream to pay the Brownies for their work. If anything, I'd have thought that would attract cats to the tidied areas, and so keep mice away.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:19 AM on January 11
posted by Paul Slade at 1:19 AM on January 11
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posted by workerant at 11:56 PM on January 7 [9 favorites]