Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here today to bring you something completely different, which I hope you will find entertaining. You may remember me from such illuminating posts as “Show And Tell” and “Things From Afar”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I’m lying in the living room on a nice sunny morning, wondering why I’m not getting more biscuits and why the guy I live with isn’t getting ready for our morning walk. Could he have forgotten? 
I did get another biscuit (whew, huh), and got to go on my morning walk, a few minutes later. It’s a beautiful day today, by the way.
I have something quite special for you today. Namely, some movies. I wanted to say “some films”, but the guy I live with said that might be too pompous, and we wouldn’t want that.
The titles were something we had to discuss. I thought “The Mice Movies” would be better, since the movies we have for you aren’t of just one mouse, but the guy I live with said no, the word mouse here can be a synecdoche, and so I guess we’ll go with that. He vetoed “Mice: The Movie”, for reasons which may be obvious.
Anyway, here they are. There’s a pile of sunflower seeds on the edge of the patio, and it attracted some visitors. The guy I live with lay on the kitchen floor, with the camera resting on the metal threshold, which you can see in the lower right. I was lying in my fort and got all excited when the guy I live with lay down in front of it, so I got out to see what he was doing. The clattering sounds are from my toenails on the kitchen floor. I don’t know why the camera amplifies the sound of the highway and stuff so much, but it just does.
I even have some “deleted scenes” for you, those being practically obligatory these days. In the first one, the photographer begin to snicker, which I found most undignified. (You can hear him doing that in the feature film, too.)
In the second, the guy I live with said I spoiled it with all the clattering and heavy breathing.
I hope you enjoyed the movies as much as I did making all the noise to accompany them.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
YIKES! Clearly, the mice are plotting to take over the manor house! Perhaps you should consider planting a mint protective perimeter–it seems to have done the trick around my uncle’s garage.
The price we pay for living in a semi-rural area, next to fields, or so says the guy I live with. Anyway, the mice’re out of the house, and back in the garden, so things are sort of back to normal.
Chess, what a really excellent and entertaining film! I don’t think it at all pompous to call it a film, I shall be the first to nominate it as the best documentary short. The guy you live with must be fitter than you lead us to believe, to be able to lie on the floor like that – and get up again. I can’t do that now. We have woodmice in the courtyard outside our kitchen and I watch them at length but could never get close enough to film. Are yours woodmice? They look somewhat on the large side. We do know that many things are larger “over there”. I remember, over fifty years ago, when my father returned from his first visit to the U.S. He said the robins were as big as footballs.
Thanks; I think these are house mice (Mus musculus). Why the English language doesn’t permit “hice mice” is curious. These are probably the same ones that invaded my house a while back, but now they’ve been discouraged (by having the garage cleaned out), and so they’re in the garden, like every year. The guy I live with gets all dizzy when he gets up off the floor, which is one reason why he rarely lies on it. I lie on the floor all the time, of course, but have a hard time getting up these days. I’m kind of creaky.
Thanks, Chess. The direction and choreography were astounding!
Thanks. During the day the squirrels are at the sunflower seeds, which I guess is okay, though they eat other things (like hens-and-chicks) which annoys the guy I live with to no end.
Will there be a blooper reel? I hope so.
Well, the one with me making all the noise, and panting so loudly, is the one the guy I live with would call a blooper reel. (The last one.) I thought panting would add a homey touch.
Thoroughly enjoyed the movie/film Chess and especially the out-takes. It was good to hear you getting inquisitive and panting for sound effect. Chunky little mice but they sure could move, better on the outside than inside running past your fort. More movies of Chess I say….
I really like the idea of more movies featuring me. Maybe when the sprinkler gets going. He did run it some, today, to water some transplants out in the “way back”. It’s a gear-driven sprinkler made in Oz, believe it or not, which is really excellent. My favorite, though, is the Noodlehead. It’s really a bit early for watering, though. It got up to about 65 here today (say 17C), and the forecast for tonight? Snow. Really and truly. The mice’re pretty chunky, as you say. Probably from eating a lot of peanut butter. Oh, and like potato chips and corn chips, when the bag gets down to nothing but tiny broken pieces, the guy I live with would toss the bag onto the garage floor, and it would be taken care of that way. I know that makes us sound like slobs, which we definitely are not; the guy I live with doesn’t like wasting food.
You’re guy is a real softie, I think he secretly enjoys the mice, that is providing they remain outside not inside. He it made it to 16 here today, not as cold as the other day when it was only 13C all day, brrr for autumn.
Better than 40C, I say. The guy I live with likes hot weather (the humidity goes down as the temperature goes up), but we purebred border collies greatly prefer cooler weather. The mice are kind of cute. So long as they don’t eat his bulbs and seedlings, that is.
I started laughing long before the videographer did — with the first scurrying mouse. Still wiping tears away. The dogs I live with would have been barking like crazy, so a little panting seems remarkably restrained to me.
He thought it was pretty funny. I was really getting impatient, as you can tell from my toenails clicking on the floor. I was more interested in getting attention from the guy I live with than with him making a mouse movie. Of course, and this is way before my time, what occurred to the guy I live with is, “Now it’s time to say goodnight, to all our fam-i-ly…”
Or is to “to all our company”? Don’t really want to look it up.
Hey there! Hi there! Ho there! ‘Company’ sounds right. I did look it up but only found the lyrics for the opening song, with a passing mention that the closing song had slightly different lyrics. Yet it is the closing lyrics — M-I-C (See you real soon!) K-E-Y (Why? Because we like you!) — that stick in the memory. You’re as welcome as can be.
My mommy was a huge Donald Duck fan and there are lots of things about him in the house here. In fact she was a huge fan of old comics. Winsor McCay, George Herriman, etc. Mickey Mouse, not so much. The guy I live with is old enough to remember when Disneyland opened.
My heavens, Chess, clearly you are the star of that movie, and the outtake, and the blooper reel. Those mice could have been computer simulated, but you let us know it was real by your genius snuffling. I was glad to read it was you providing the sounds; otherwise, I would suggest the guy you live with get an asthma check-up. Skittering mice with audio effects will be hard to beat in future films.
Thank you, I agree, I’m the star of the movie. Though, I am the star of everything around here. The guy I live with agrees with that.
There will be a time later on this year when there are a lot fewer mice, but we won’t talk about that now.
good stuff. You guys have a lot of fun. thanks for sharing your “art”
Thanks. The guy I live with thought it was pretty funny, but also hoped there would be mouse fights. They run around after each other really fast.
Or maybe that’s not fighting, it’s something else …..
G’day Chess. It looks like you have a problem with them there mice! I have a solution for you, snakes. Plenty down here that we could export to you!! Or if that fails how about Scarface claw the toughest tom in town? Not sure you would appreciate a furry purring monster living with you Chess. Good to see that sprinkler is still going strong! Thanks for the movies Chess, they are very entertaining.
G’Day. Turns out, that solution will be the one employed here. We don’t have your king browns, or tiger snakes here (just as well, eh?), but ordinary garter snakes do the trick quite effectively, Disgusting to see, says the guy I live with. One year, there was an infestation of mice so bad they got into the stove, an Amana that my mommy talked the guy I live with into buying for about $995US in the early 90s, and when you turned it on, well, whew. It couldn’t be cleaned so it had to go. That spring, the snakes moved in, and they got larger while the mouse population got smaller. There was even an bullsnake, meter and a half long, whose size startled even the guy I live with. And there’s a green racer, very large, and very ill-tempered, who lives in the garden, somewhere. The guy I live with has to warn visitors that they might come across a large reptile sunning itself.
We got about 2″ of snow overnight. It *was* slushy until the temp dropped into the teens(f) and it froze. Made for a pretty drive down the county road.
Nothing here, just wind.
I noticed that on my way to work. Looks like it stopped at Evergreen.
We like it when it stops somewhere else. Rain is better. Moderate amounts of rain.
I know those guys! There’s Mighty in the lead, and Templeton Jr. stuffing his face, Algernon on the look-out for cats, Jerry dashing around like crazy, Stuart (he organized the foraging party), and Danger marching to his own drummer.
The guy I live with thinks of Danger Mouse, and his sidekick Penfold. My mommy taped all those back in the days when people taped things. He eventually gave away all the tapes because there wasn’t a tape player in the house and so they seemed superfluous. And he wanted to be Mighty Mouse when he was little. To save the day, you know.
I’m speechless from amusement and horror. My favorite video is blooper #2. You really have a problem. Maybe you should bring in some snakes for the winter. The guy you live with owes you some brie for the sound effects.
It’s too cold for snakes in the winter, and, in fact, since we have very warm spells in the winter, sometimes they come out of hibernation, with fatal results. I’ve been annoying the guy I live with in persisting to check out an expired snake, since it’s on the other side of the canal road, down a fairly steep bank, and I almost pulled him over one time, racing down to look at it. But, you know, dogs have to check out these things. “Amusement and horror” describes the way visitors often view the garden, so the mice are another one of those metaphors we could do without.
Hilarious! And why not “hice mice”??? I never thought of that before.
English is weird; I pity anyone trying to learn it. (Imagine trying to figure out the pronunciations of “bough”, “trough”, “through”, and “enough” just by looking at the words.)
Worcester, my personal favorite, pronounced “wooster”, for crying out loud!
Well, and Cholmondeley is pronounced “Chumly”. Very funny passage in Christopher Lloyd’s clematis book, about a visitor looking at a dead plant of it in his garden. “Mrs. Chol-mon-de-ley is dead. Poor Mrs. Chol-mon-de-ley.”