doubled edged sword

ok, so there are few inventions so brilliant and yet so infuriating as the battry-operated free-wheeling and non-attached mouse.......yes...it glides on it's little pad without the strangling of wires that annoy me when i use the laptop at work.....but when said mouse's batteries eke out their last jolts of power, the battery mouse becomes utterly useless.....until fresh batteries are located....not an easy task in the early hours.......when drawers are pulled open, duds are discovered and definitively discarded......why would anybody put dead batteries back in a drawer?........and so the poaching begins....the ones in use as we speak were stolen from a portable tape player in the 'electronics' drawer in the buffet......the missing batteries will be rediscovered at some point...when i want to listen to a book on tape, for instance.....and then i will wonder aloud just what idiot stole those batteries............