Unwanted resident.

I've been noticing this past week that my mouse has developed a skip and jump. Now, I have worked at tech support long enough to know that the vast majority of the time when someone calls and says they need a new mouse, they just need to clean it properly. Turn the disk. Remove the ball and look inside at the three rollers; one that looks like a wheel the other two like little rods. Flakes of skin and dirt have been picked up by the ball to deposit a ring of waxy gunk around the rollers. Reach in with a fingernail and scrape that crud off and, nine times out of ten the problem will be solved.

Except that I have an optical mouse.

So, after a week of noticing this and just discounting it because that kind of thing doesn't happen to an optical mouse, I finally picked it up and looked.

In the depression housing the LED, a tiny spider had taken up residence and its gossamer web had been disrupting mouse performance.

My basement is like "Kingdom of the Spiders". They are everywhere. Not that it's a bad thing because there are seldom other kinds of insects to be found. I just didn't expect one to take up residence inside my mouse.

Sorry, pal. This is your eviction notice.