Of Mice and Lego

From Lego Star Wars Products

I already had a high opinion of Lego. I thought it was a good toy for teaching prospective architects and engineers anyway, and then they brought out the Star Wars sets. 

Heartlake City pool from Lego Friends

My enthusiasm for building the Death Star in Lego was somewhat dampened by it costing a large amount of money. We do have several ships from Pirates of the Caribbean and I think we have three Hagrid huts, (one even has Scabbers the Rat in a jar). These were fun, but for a girl piglet, Lego suddenly hit new heights with the Friends range. Managing to combine pink bricks with fun tree houses and camper vans, instead of boutiques and hairdressing salon (Polly the Pocket - guilty as charged), these are great to build in the first place and fun to play with once built. And they can be rebuilt. 

Anyway, my approval of Lego has hit even higher heights. For a while I had been nursing this splendid idea that they ought to make historical sets, like a Roman villa or replica Stephenson's Rocket. I could see a big market in schools as well as pushy bourgeois parents. What with the teaching, mopping of floors, ferrying piglet and her fellow piglets to karate, cubs and synchronised swimming, I felt I didn't have time to set up a factory and sort this out myself so eventually I wrote to Lego and suggested they get on with it. They wrote back a very kind personalised letter saying they were most sorry, because it is a great idea, but they have a strict policy not to use ideas people send in to them as then it is an issue who the copyright belongs to. 

Well frankly a commercial company who won't exploit people casually writing in with good ideas, but will reply politely, is top dollar in my opinion. 

And now they have hit even higher high heights as I have discovered an easy way to make my fortune without having to build a factory - using old Lego Pirates of the Caribbean ship boxes. This idea is not only economical, it is eco-friendly! as it involves recycling old cardboard boxex.

This summer, we acquired a young female cat. This is a long story which begins with the lying slag who originally owned the cat assuring us that the cat had been spayed and ends with kittens. Anyway, now we have two cats. And the mother cat has started in a highly responsible fashion bringing frogs and mice in for the young kitten. (Urrrggggh!!!!) The frogs are easy because they lie there with their tiny claws on their heads, going: I am dead, I am dead, really really I am so boring because I am dead, so you can pick them up with the dustpan and fling them back over the fence into the neighbour's pond. However the mice do have a tendency to run into the imitation coal fire or under the dresser and are very difficult to catch. 

But no more! I have discovered that you can chase them into a Pirates of the Caribbean Lego pirate ship box. It's wide and narrow at the top so it looks like a good safe haven to a panic-stricken mouse, and because it's long, they run quite a long way down it and you can easily scoop them up in it before flinging them over the fence into the neighbour's pond. 

Here are illustrations, with a catnip mouse as model. (I do regret buying the cats such a realistic catnip mouse when I come down in the mornings to find the little furry beast lying in the middle of the kitchen floor pretending to be real.) 

Aim your box at the mouse like this.

It will go in the box like this.

All right. It will actually be more like this.

(LOL, I have seriously used this twice to good effect - although not in the middle of the kitchen floor - jammed against the dresser and the wall so the mouse hasn't got anywhere else to run when I poke it with the mop handle.)

Now, does anyone have a large supply of used Pirates of the Caribbean Lego pirate ship boxes which I can come round, collect and re-sell as mouse-catching implements?