Unfiltered Story #305293

I am a big softie when it comes to animals, so much that I literally cry when I see an animal in distress or a dead one. I am also very clumsy and have injured myself in weird ways over the years, however the following instance takes the cake.

My partner comes home to tell me that there is a mouse sitting in front of our flat. We live on the third floor and our neighbours from above are young and boisterous, so I, being a softie, decide to go and get the mouse to at least hide in the cellar if I can’t get it to leave the house.

Things go wrong when my partner decides to keep the door open and look at what I do. The mouse finds its way into our flat and runs straight into our cat. You think you know where this is going, but you’re wrong. Our cat is lazy and a very bad hunter, after less than two minutes of half hearted pursuit the mouse finds a hiding spot and our cat decides she isn’t that interested.

That still leaves us with a mouse in our kitchen. The kitchen is small but long with cabinets on both sides that are not connected to the floor, as we inherited it from the previous tenant. So the mouse has plenty of opportunities to hide. In the end it took us three hours to get it out of the kitchen, at which point it hid in the bathroom. However the bathroom does not have any cabinets or hiding places. In the end I finally manage to catch the mouse (while our cat complained because we weren’t paying attention to her). I am wearing gloves, but the mouse being a mouse and also very scared bites my hand directly through the glove, and doesn’t let go until I release it on the house stairs outside. My fingers are bleeding and I start freaking out because a wild animal bit me.

I wash the wound with water, put on a band aid, but it’s still bleeding. So I decide to call a non emergency help number to ask them for medical advice (something that has been introduced in Germany to help people find the appropriate care without calling 112). After having a laugh, the doctor at the other end tells me to go to the Notaufnahme (emergency room). So at midnight my partner drivers me across town, so that I can tell a young doctor and a young nurse that I’m there because my cat is useless and could they please look at the bite.

My tetanus shot is recent, so it’s a fairly low risk, but I still get a round of antibiotics prescribed. Because of my intolerance to an antibiotic doctors prescribe for a lot of stuff, I need to get a specific one. Luckily, one of the two emergency pharmacies open that night is right near our flat, so I’m thinking, I can get it there and go to sleep….but, of course, this had to go wrong, too.

Because, as the very friendly pharmacist explained, this specific antibiotic is rare and they get it once or twice a year. He is very kind and calls the other pharmacy to ask if they have it – and they do! So we drive there… Again back to the hospital and about a kilometer more after it, in the opposite direction of our home.

We got home at 2 a.m. At least I saw the mouse and it was heading away.