When a mouse began visiting the newsroom...

When a mouse began visiting the newsroom of a local television station, management called in an exterminator. The creature, nicknamed Mickey by staffers, disappeared. Just another example of how soon the New Hollywood forgets. After all, the station (KCAL--Channel 9) is owned by a company that owes some of its success to a mouse--Walt Disney Co.

One of the guest speakers at the World UFO Congress in Tucson, Ariz., was Enrique Castillo-Rincon of Venezuela, who recounted how he was abducted by “German-looking aliens” from the planet Shi-el-lho in another galaxy.

“I’m thinking Hollywood,” Castillo-Rincon confided before his talk. “I’m going to meet with two to three producers, and maybe Shirley MacLaine.”

He didn’t bump into her on Shi-el-lho?

A sign on an apartment building visible from the Harbor Freeway proclaims: “If you can read this, you’d be home by now.”

Not really. What the owner probably meant to say was: “If you lived here, you’d be home by now.”

But why quibble? It’s probably cheaper to live on Shi-el-lho, anyway.

Speaking of ways to pass the hours on the road, we’re appalled to bring you this from the new guidebook, “Los Angeles,” edited by John Wilcock.

He quotes a L.A. police captain telling the Board of Supervisors: “The practice of making love on the highways is becoming alarmingly prevalent. In many cases, it is flagrantly open.”

The captain made that report, by the way, in 1921.

Which reminds us: Reader Carol Richards found a surprising ingredient in a local newspaper’s recipe (see illustration).

Some homeowners may have felt a bit of concern after an appeals court ruled that muralists who decorate buildings are entitled to be notified before their artwork can be destroyed. The case grew out of a dispute on a property at Soto and 4th streets in Boyle Heights.

Who knows what art is anymore, though? We’d like to point out that the court added in a footnote that the decision “does not apply to graffiti, which . . . is hardly classifiable as ‘fine art.’ ”

In other words, if Chaka decorated your property, feel free to erase his markings.

Tom Bratter of Palms says he winced slightly when a weekend television host mentioned that L.A.’s White Memorial Hospital was on the “cutting edge” of open-heart surgery.

miscelLAny:

Blackie, the L.A. city Fire Department’s last horse, died in 1939.