So cute it doesn't matter about the name

I was just about to go to bed one night last week when, in the darkness, I saw something apparently fall from the ceiling in the conservatory. Odd, I thought, but then put it from my mind.

However, roll on a few days and I stepped into the conservatory and saw something small, dark, furry and very fast disappear along the skirting board. Ah, a mouse!

And then yesterday it presented itself to me on a plate, hunkered down at the bottom of an empty wooden planter that is waiting for the right house plant to grace it.

Cute, no?

With those button eyes, petite proportions and plenty of rich brown in its fur, this is no House Mouse, which would have seemed the obvious choice.

So what is it? In most northern parts of the country you'd have just one choice - Wood Mouse. But in the southern half of England and Wales, there's another mouse, the Yellow-necked.

My mouse turned out to be really rather approachable, and had clearly taken a liking to my Opium Poppy seedheads that had been destined for a vase.

This is where that deep-rooted desire many of us have to put names to things really kicked in. Is this Wood or Yellow-necked?

Well, Yellow-necked has really bulging eyes, and my mouse's eyes do look like little berries that haven't been pushed far enough into its head.

And Yellow-necked tends to have a really distinct line between the brown upperparts and pure white underparts, whereas Wood Mouse has a less distinct line and the underparts are greyer. Again, this looks rather like the former.

But to me it had the dainty proportions of Wood Mouse, and rather too much dark in the fur - Yellow-necked is often quite gingery.

The real tell-tale feature of Yellow-necked is - wait for it! - a yellow neck patch. Wood Mouse can have a small one, but the Yellow-necked's patch goes right across the chest.

But I never got a full-frontal view of my mouse.

So it got duly released, unidentified, near my compost heap where it has food and brambles and tree roots and dense cover galore and I hope will be very happy.

For a few moments, I called it Marjorie, just to give it a name. If it is a Wood Mouse, it is one of an estimated 40 million or so that are alive at the start of each breeding season, the second commonest rodent in the country. If it is a Yellow-necked, then there are thought to be only three quarters of a million.

It will have to run the gauntlet of Tawny Owls and Foxes and Domestic Cats, but that's the great jungle of life outside our back doors (and front doors), and sometimes inside our houses too!