We have spotted a mouse who has come into the living room to escape the incoming winter weather. In Colorado, we often got mice moving inside at this time of year and we mercilessly dispatched them by means of traps baited with peanut butter. It was always quick and wildly successful.

But peanut butter is not really a thing in Italy -- there are a couple of jars in the big supermarket outside town, but they are viewed with side-eyed suspicion and I suspect that they are only there at all in a half-hearted concession to the handful of American ex-pats who insist (in the face of all reason) that is is good to eat.

Instead, there are acres of chocolatey Nutella (big jars, medium jars, small jars, gigantic jars) and Nutella products (Nutella sandwich cookies, Nutella candies, Nutella cereal, etc.) lining the shelves. This is considered much more nutritionally sound than peanut butter on the theory that chocolate sandwiches give you energy. And, to be fair, a breakfast of Nutella sandwich cookies and espresso would probably make you feel quite jazzy.

"We should probably bait the traps with Nutella," I said to Jonathan. "After all, it is an Italian mouse."

But we are old hands at the mouse-trapping game and so we procured a rare and costly jar of peanut butter and some readily available traps (we are clearly not the only ones around here who are receiving seasonal rodent visitors.) We knew exactly where the mouse was hanging out (under the couch) because we had both seen it there on separate occasions.

So we put the peanut-butter-baited traps within easy striking distance of the couch and waited.

 And waited. 

And waited.

It has been a week now and we are still waiting. We have begun to think that possibly something else untoward has happened to the mouse. Or perhaps it has moved back outside to enjoy the changing colors of the chestnut leaves. Maybe it headed south, following the sun. In any case, our peanut butter lies untasted, spurned.

We discussed the issue with the boys down at the pub, where one topic of conversation is as good as another.

"What did you bait the traps with?" they asked.

"Peanut butter."

"Ah," Almo said, "there's your trouble -- you should have used Nutella."

I have made a new label for our olive oil.