Even as I fell, I knew just what had happened. I knew that the tip of my tail had been cut off and that I was about to crash on to the floor and everyone in the kitchen would be after me. “A mouse!” they were shouting. “A mouse! A mouse! Catch it quick!” I hit the floor and jumped up and ran for my life. All around me there were big black boots going stamp stamp stamp and I dodged around them and ran and ran and ran, twisting and turning, and dodging and swerving across the kitchen floor. “Get it!” they were shouting. “Kill it! Stamp on it!”The Whole floor seemed to be full of black boots stamping away at me and I dodged and swerved and twisted and turned and then in sheer desperation, hardly knowing what I was doing, wanting only a place to hide, I ran up the trouser-leg of one of the cooks and clung to his sock!
“Hey!” the cook shouted. “Jeepers creepers! He’s gone up my trouser! Hold on, boys! I’ll get him this time!”
The man’s hands began slap-slapping at the trouser-leg and now I really was going to get smashed if I didn’t move quickly. There was only one way to go and that was up. I dug my little claws into the hairy skin of the man’s leg and scuttled upwards, higher and higher, past the calf and past the knee and on to the thigh.
“Holy smoke!” the man was yelling. “It’s going all the way up! It’s going right up my leg!” I heard shrieks of laughter coming from the other cooks but I can promise you I wasn’t laughing myself. I was running for my life. The man’s hands were slap-slap-slapping all around me and he was jumping up and down as though he was standing on hot bricks, and I kept climbing and I kept dodging and very soon I reached the very top of the trouser-leg and there was nowhere else to go.
“Help! Help! Help!” the man was screaming. “It’s in my knickers! It’s running round in my flaming knickers! Get it out! Someone help me to get it out!”
“Take off your trousers, you silly slob!” someone else shouted. “Pull down your pants and we’ll soon catch him!”
I was in the middle of the man’s trousers now, in the place where the two trouser-legs meet and the zip begins. It was dark and awfully hot in there. I knew I had to keep going. I dashed onward and found the top of the other trouser-leg. I went down it like greased lightning and came out at the bottom of it and once again I was on the floor. I heard the stupid cook still shouting, “It’s in my trousers! Get it out! Will somebody please help me to get it out before it bites me!” I caught a flashing glimpse of the entire kitchen staff crowding round him and laughing their heads off and nobody saw the little brown mouse as it flew across the floor and dived into a sack of potatoes.
I burrowed down in among the dirty potatoes and held my breath.
The cook must have started taking his trousers right off because now they were shouting, “It’s not in there! There’s no mice in there, you silly twerp!”
“There was! I swear there was!” the man was shouting back. “You’ve never had a mouse in your trousers! You don’t know what it feels like!”
The fact that a tiny little creature like me had caused such a commotion among a bunch of grown-up men gave me a happy feeling. I couldn’t help smiling in spite of the pain in my tail.
I stayed where I was until I was sure they had forgotten about me. Then I crept out of the potatoes and cautiously poked my tiny head over the edge of the sack. Once again the kitchen was all of a bustle with cooks and waiters rushing about everywhere. I saw the waiter who had come in earlier with the complaint about tough meat coming in again. “Hey boys!” he shouted. “I asked the old hag if the new bit of meat was any better and she said it was perfectly delicious! She said it was really tasty!”