Mouse...

Splashing around in the shallows of unconsciousness, a noise drags me back to a more wakeful state. I open my eyes and look over at the clock. The glowing red digits seem incomprehensible at first but then it sinks in that it's some ridiculous hour of the night. Why have I woken up? I've got an important meeting in the morning and I really need a good night's sleep. I lie there listening for a few minutes and , just as I'm at the point of giving up and going back to sleep I hear it again - a faint noise, barely audible at all.

Scritch, scratch. Scritch.

I know that sound. My heart sinks as I reach over to put the light on. Yep, there it is, underneath the chair on the other side of the room, frozen in the sudden light; a mouse. That bloody cat! I swear I'll throttle it one of these days.

I slowly climb out of bed, not taking my eyes off the mouse for even a second and cross the room. It doesn't move at all as I crouch down and reach under the chair. The moment before I'm about to grab it, it suddenly finds its feet again and is off, skirting round the wardrobe and scurrying along the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I lunge after it, sending a pile of books flying. The mouse jinks left and heads towards the bed. Knowing I won't get any sleep if it gets under the bed I leap ahead of it and divert it away towards the corner of the room.

It's a fast little bugger and before I can do anything it's disappeared underneath the chest of drawers. There is just about room enough to get my arm in, too, and I force the mouse out of the side and send it running into the pile of shoes next to the door. As its tail disappears into a trainer I cover the opening with my hand.

Sagging with relief, I catch my breath before taking the trainer, and mouse, downstairs and outside. I release the little rodent and it disappears into the bushes. Weary from all the exertion I head back to bed, taking a swipe at the cat, who's sitting there grinning at me, as I go past.

I go back to sleep easily enough but for the rest of the night my dreams are plagued by mice, whiskers twitching as they stay just out of reach.

--- ¦ ---

From yesterday's hunt, e gets yet another ten points (somebody needs to stop her running away with this. BW, any spells you could do? ;-) ) and BW, e, NiC and Gary all get 7. Jo, I'm sorry but your post was too old to get any points (it needs to be within the month ending the day before the hunt).

As I said yesterday, today is the first of the 'special bloghunts' that will come up occasionally throughout the month. In order to take part in today's hunt you need to be able to think laterally. Instead of finding a post/blog that includes the target, I want you to find one that doesn't include it but does contain a word/phrase that is connected to it in some way.

The normal points will be given for how recent the post is etc but there will be bonus points available the lateral thinking part. You should try to make the connection from your word back to the target word as obscure as possible, but it must still make sense. Sort of like the word association games BW has been playing all week. Points will be awarded for two things: how obscure the connection is and how unusual the word or phrase you searched for is. You'll need to include your search term in your answer.

Got it? No? Well, let me give you an example:

Say the target was 'Bush'. You may initially associate that with George Dubya so you could search for a post that contains 'President of the U.S.' but not Bush. A post like that would get you some bonus points but not that many because the connection is a fairly obvious one. Far better would be to search for 'Mulberry', which could lead you to this post. The connection is more obscure and the search word much more unusual so it would score more highly. Clear?

There will be ten points available for the obscurity of the connection and five for how unusual your search term is. Clearly, this could affect the scores quite dramatically so get your thinking caps on and start that lateral thinking.

The target is a fairly obvious one, given the time of year: 'Easter'

Because it's a more complicated hunt (and the fact that there won't be one tomorrow), you have until midday on Saturday to get your entry in so take your time and come up with something that will earn lots of bonus points. If you're unsure what you're meant to be doing then leave a comment and I'll try to explain it better. If you like playing like this then we may well do it again next week.

Good luck and happy hunting!