A hardworking mouse was caught on video: cleaning up the barn every night

“The Neat Mouse” reminded me of scenes from “Ratatouille”

A British photographer managed to secretly film a mouse cleaning out his shed every night. A man who noticed his belongings being mysteriously moved around found the industrious rodent tidying up his workspace.

A mouse was filmed secretly cleaning a man’s shed almost every night for two months, writes The Guardian.

Wildlife photographer Rodney Holbrook noticed that objects he left out of place would mysteriously return to their place overnight.

Rodney Holbrook, from Builth Wells in Powys, Wales, installed a night-vision camera on his desk to find out what was going on and captured footage reminiscent of the 2007 animated film Ratatouille, in which a food-loving rodent secretly cooks in restaurant.

Holbrook, 75, told the BBC: “This has been going on for months. I call him the Welsh Neat Mouse. First I noticed that some of the bird feed I was making was in some old boots I had stored in the shed, so I set up a camera.”

Night vision footage showed the seemingly conscientious rodent collecting clothespins, corks, nuts and bolts and placing them in a tray on Holbrook’s desk.

Holbrook even experimented with leaving various objects to see if the mouse could pick them up, but the creature was unperturbed and the rodent was even seen carrying cable ties to a potty.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the mouse cleaning up the mess,” Holbrook said.

“He put all kinds of things into the box, bits of plastic, nuts and bolts. I don’t bother cleaning now because I know he’ll take care of it. I take things out of the box, and by morning he puts it back in its place. Ninety-nine times out of 100, the mouse will clean up during the night,” says the man.

A similar incident, The Guardian writes, occurred in 2019, when a viral video showed a mouse “stacking” items in a man’s shed near Bristol.

Steve McKeers told reporters he thought he was “going crazy” when screws and metal objects kept appearing in a box of birdseed. He set up a camera and filmed the mouse putting screws and other metal objects into a container.