Miss Information

Miss Information is annoyed by pests

Miss Information loves animals. She identifies herself as a cat person, but really anything furry is ok with her. Except raccoons. She hates those bastards. She also really thinks reptiles are cool and has a close personal relationship with the library fish, Dewey 11, so it isn’t just mammals.

Anyway, there’s a problem with annoying vermin in the library. Not the librarians. First there was the bird. A customer brought in a stunned sparrow. It had knocked itself senseless on a nearby window. Miss Information would have constructed a nice outdoor shelter for the little thing, because, well, birds should be outside. However the kind-hearted librarian in charge put the bird in a cardboard box and put that box into the librarians’ workroom, where it (the bird not the box) quickly regained its senses and began flying around, ending up in the rafters thanks to a missing ceiling tile. It was captured by two staff members who took it outside (door held by Miss Information). All of them congratulated themselves on a job well done and returned to the librarian’s workroom for the inevitable sharing of war stories only to find the bird was still flying around. Apparently the bird wasn’t so much captured as not captured, then. Eventually the bird really was captured and released, but not before someone left the workroom door open, allowing the bird to have a good, proper test of its flying around the library skills.

A couple of weeks after that there was a bat in the library. No one quite figured out where that came from but it was released (door held by Miss Information).

Then there was the dog. Not Miss Information’s shift but apparently a local dog wandered in while the door was propped open for the daily delivery. The reference desk staff briefly discussed what to do before deciding chasing dogs out of the library wasn’t in either of their job descriptions. The dog quickly realized he was in hell and left on his own accord.

Just before closing last Saturday, a bunch of teenage girls started screaming. Not so unusual. But the cause for the screaming was a teeny, tiny mouse. Miss Information tried but failed to catch the mouse. She planned to let it go outdoors where it would escape the library mouse poison.

Today she came into the staff room to find the furniture moved and a strange Dr Seussian sculpture where the couch used to be. It consisted of several vases stacked on top of each other. Miss Information thought it was someone getting creative but it was pointed out to her that the bottom vase contained a mouse. She offered to take the mouse outside. Apparently someone had decided that the best course of action was to call the pest control guy and show him the mouse, in the process slowly suffocating the poor bastard (the mouse not the pest control guy).

That this seemed like a good idea to anyone makes Miss Information worry about the people around her. Also the mice.

posted by Miss Information @ 4:47 PM