Mickey Mouse. Danger Mouse. Mighty Mouse. Tidy Mouse?
A retired man in the U.K. discovered this small superhero living in his garden shed when he noticed items moving to different spots when he wasn’t around. It started when bits of food meant for the local birds were appearing in shoes he’d left in the shed.
The mouse picked a good person to team up with if he was looking for notoriety. Rodney Holbrook, age 75, is a wildlife photographer.
Holbrook set up a night-vision camera in his shed to solve the mystery of the moving bird snacks. That’s when he discovered Tidy Mouse.
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Or Welsh Tidy Mouse, as Holbrook dubbed him (he lives in Wales).
Holbrook began leaving out different objects to see what Welsh Tidy Mouse would move, and Welsh Tidy Mouse had no trouble moving items back where they belonged — or at least where Welsh Tidy Mouse thought they belonged.
Welsh Tidy Mouse was caught on camera in late November, busily placing small objects from Holbrook’s workbench into a small box. Holbrook said he’s experimented with different items to see if anything is too heavy for the rodent to move.
“He moved all sorts of things into the box, bits of plastic, nuts and bolts,” Holbrook told The Guardian. “I don’t bother to tidy up now, as I know he will see to it. I leave things out of the box and they put it back in its place by the morning.”
Holbrook joked to the BBC, “I think he would tidy my wife away if I left her in there.”
See for yourself in The Guardian’s video, which has been viewed more than 2 million times!
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Megan Jackson, a researcher at the University of Bristol who works with mice, agrees with Holbrook that Welsh Tidy Mouse might be hiding and storing food in the box. Or, Jackson theorized in the New York Times, Welsh Tidy Mouse may be building a nest.
”Mice are willing to put in a lot of effort to work at something they find rewarding,” Jackson said, noting that Welsh Tidy Mouse is exhibiting “intrinsically mouse-y behavior.”
It’s not even the first time Holbrook encountered a rodent prone to organization. In 2019, he helped a friend in Bristol set up a night camera in a shed to discover why screws and other items were appearing in the bird food. You guessed it — it was a mouse.
I wonder if Welsh Tidy Mouse or one of his relatives is available for housecleaning services? I could use their help!
Mouse was secretly filmed tidying a man’s shed every night originally appeared on Simplemost.com
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