This week’s #writephoto prompt is

Mus Souris had a problem. The tornado had been inaptly timed. He and his mussus had just settled into their toadstool apartment when the wretched wind had picked up No.7, The Fungus and blown it into the acacia. While normally this would be treated as a small inconvenience and he could have organised a temporary move, this had the potential to be a total disaster. It was bad enough that his soon to be mother in law was coming to stay, but add in the plan for his fourteen nephews to have a sleepover and the recipe was not encouraging; especially with his front door now fourteen feet off the ground.

Mus scrolled through the google responses to his ‘who can help me move my house?’ question to Alexa. The first ten, irritatingly, focused on the contents rather than on the house itself, though Mus chided himself for failing to focus the question more accurately.

Entry eleven, however, suggested a more hopeful response. He dialled the number.

A cheery, if rather menacing voice answered after one ring. ‘Proboscis Plant and Animal Hire. All your lifting needs dealt with, with a grunt and a grin!’

‘Oh hello. Do you move houses?’

The responder sounded unsure. ‘We can, er, Sir?’

‘It’s Souris. Mus Souris. My house is stuck up a tree and I wondered…’

‘Oh! Are you an, erm, you know, thingy?’

Mus sighed. Weren’t they beyond this causal mousism? ‘Yes, I’m a mouse. So?’

‘No, really it’s not…’

‘Ok, we squeak but all that stuff about messing our own homes is exaggerated, I, for one, haven’t been inside a wheel in a decade and, personally I hate cheese. Anyway, most of the rubbish you hear was spread by those bloody rats to deflect from their own problems…’

‘No, really, it’s only…’

‘What?’

‘Well, our lifting operatives are all elephants.’

‘Ah…’

‘So, you’ll understand there might be some health and safety considerations.’

‘Crushing?’

‘Inadvertent dimensional reconfiguration has been known, Mr Souris, but, as caring employers, we have to ensure the mental wellbeing of all our staff and, well, most of our Heffalump Hydraulic Operatives are inclined to bouts of RAIN…’

‘What? They dribble?’

‘No, not rain. R.A.I.N – rodent anxiety incapacity neuralgism. Basically if they see a mouse…’

‘Excuse me? You’re slipping into institutional mousism again.’

‘I’m sorry. Of course I meant a mammal with rodentian characteristics. They freeze. Which, of course, depending when they become aware of a mo… when they first notice the, erm… it can cause problems. Only last week one of our best operatives was draining a lake prior to removing some boulders and came upon a party of water voles over from Helsinki for the grain festival and he let go of several hundred gallons of water in his panic.’

‘Did he kill the water voles?’

‘No, they loved it – they’d been on the grain for a couple of days and basically surfed the ensuing tsunami. But a flock of passing sheep thought differently. Their coats were just about to be harvested – they were at maximum bouffancy – but after the dousing both the wool and their profits shrank by seventy four percent.’

‘You can’t help then?’

‘I fear not. But you could try Derek.’

‘Derek?’

‘He’s a crane. Now I know you’re going to say one bird isn’t likely to be enough, but he manages an avian assistance association. They’ve become pretty adept at difficult lifting jobs like yours.’

‘Thanks. It’s kind of you to recommend a competitor.’

‘Oh they aren’t really competitors. Most of their work is small scale. It’s only where we can’t take on the job that they might be the answer. I mean, there are the side effects…’

‘How so?’

‘Well, for starters, you would have to expect your house to be redecorated.’

‘Sorry?’

‘To lift a house you’ll probably need at least 200 different species of birds… that’s a lot of straining and a lot of…’

‘Shit…’

‘Precisely. Would you like their number anyway?’