AGI – Every morning for two months, Rodney Holbrook mysteriously found the items scattered on the table in his garage the night before in order. The 75-year-old, who lives in a small village in Wales, was struck by the bizarre phenomenon and decided to install a camera. He discovered that it was a mouse that was putting clothespins, screws, bolts and corks in a box left on the village counter.
“Early on I noticed that some of the food I was giving out to the birds ended up in old shoes I was keeping in the shed,” Holbrook told the BBC. “99 times out of 100, the mouse cleans up all night long. It's really amazing that he gets everything back in the box, maybe he enjoys it.”
The former postman and amateur photographer believes that the rodent uses objects to hide the nuts and tried some experiments in which he left a variety of things on the table to see if the animal could pick them up. And life together is going well. “I'm not going to worry about cleaning up now, I'll leave the things out of the box and he'll put them back in their place until the next morning,” she explained.
This isn't the first time Holbrook has encountered such an organized mouse. In 2019, while living in Bristol, a friend asked him to help repair a night camera and together they discovered and filmed another mouse keeping a stable in order. “That video went viral and reached people all over the world,” he recalled. “I can’t believe years later the same thing happened here in Builth Wells.”
Reprint reserved © Agi 2023