
An industrious mouse tidies up a retired electrician’s tool shed each night - bryanrasmussen
https://petapixel.com/2019/04/20/trail-camera-catches-mouse-secretly-cleaning-mans-shed-every-night/
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fyp
I saw this on reddit a few weeks ago and it actually had useful comments:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalsBeingBros/comments/dwj7i3/a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimalsBeingBros/comments/dwj7i3/a_72_year_old_retired_man_from_britain_found_out/f7jnzcy/)

tl;dr; the mouse is nesting

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floatingatoll
Relevant top comment:

> _So this looks really cute and all, but what she 's doing is nesting, and
> once she fills that box with hard stuff, she adds tufts of her own fur and
> possibly other soft stuff like fiberglass insulation or the stuffing from
> car seats, then she has her babies in there, all the while peeing all over
> those parts and causing them to rust and smell like mouse piss for ever
> more._

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ljp_206
I couldn't find it with a few Google searches, but I recall an interview with
a Bansky-like character who 'created' this video and story as a sort of viral
art project. Her interview also included a few other examples of strange
phenomena she was behind. Since I'm unable to find evidence of said interview,
however, I'm doubting myself...

~~~
chaosmachine
Sounds like Zardulu

[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/24/14912316/zardulu-
viral...](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/24/14912316/zardulu-viral-videos-
mythmaking-surrealism-pedro-lasch)

~~~
jerf
I was going to flag this as not really being a HN story so much as something
I'd expect to see go by on Facebook, but it did produce an interesting article
link there.

I could see this going either way; a mouse could probably be trained to do
this for a viral video. On the other hand, you can see animals get mental
diseases known to occur in humans sometimes as well; an obsessive-compulsive
mouse is also plausible to me.

(A disturbing number of "Look at my dog/cat/whatever doing this funny thing!"
videos appears to my eyes to be the dog/cat/whatever having a seizure, for
instance.)

~~~
a3n
Maybe the mouse escaped from a behavioral lab.

~~~
bap
Yep, this one is Mr. Frisby. The rest were rats.

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schemathings
Reminds me of a book I had as a kid about Anatole the Mouse .. he would sneak
into a cheese factory at night and taste the samples and leave tasting notes,
which benefited the cheese factory .. [Anatole (mouse) -
Wikipedia]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_%28mouse%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatole_%28mouse%29))

~~~
rozab
Are there any disney films which aren't plagiarised

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loco5niner
This one clearly is not...

Eve Titus (the author) is listed as a producer on the Disney movie "The Great
Mouse Detective", which is derived from her characters.

[https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/The_Great_Mouse_Detectiv...](https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/The_Great_Mouse_Detective)

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kylek
This mouse would make some bucks if it had a Twitch channel with ads

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rebuilder
In Finland, there's a lot of old folk tradition around "house elves"
("tonttu"), that sometimes perform useful tasks, sometimes not, but are best
not angered in any case.

On the one hand, it's easy to see that mice rattling around could lead to such
stories, but on the other hand, it's difficult to imagine people intimately
familiar with mice being very mystified by them. However, if they do things
like cleaning up in the night, I can imagine that might give rise to some
myths!

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moj
Reminds me of a strange story of mysterious 'modern art' arrangements, of
leaves and twigs, that appeared every morning on a workshop stoop (spoiler, it
was a fieldmouse): "Elena's Messages: From Her Big Sur Sanctuary"
[https://www.amazon.com/Elenas-Messages-Her-Big-
Sanctuary/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Elenas-Messages-Her-Big-
Sanctuary/dp/069232951X)

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fortran77
I would think that if this mouse came by every day, he would have seen some
tell-tale "droppings."

~~~
newnewpdro
Right, this is staged b.s.

Anyone with the slightest experience dealing with rodents knows there'd be
droppings everywhere.

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cellular
I bet a lot of people's haunted houses can be explained by animals (raccoons,
rats, crows etc)

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EricE
That's a determined mouse. Favorite quip in that article's comments:

"Probably not a teenage mouse." \- ha!

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bdamm
The mouse appears to be doing “cargo cult” type of behavior, placing junk in
the bin and hoping peanuts will appear. Kind of like managers who hope that
requesting documentation will help a better product appear on time.
Fascinating.

~~~
ripsawridge
Your comment is delightful.

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ydnaclementine
cute!

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dang
Url changed from [https://laughingsquid.com/mouse-cleans-up-tool-
shed/](https://laughingsquid.com/mouse-cleans-up-tool-shed/), which points to
this.

