Kathy, Honey, Don't Read This

I have to talk about this morning's mouse, and there are details you don't want to know. It's in no way gross (other than the essential skeeviness of having an uninvited animal in the kitchen) but I doubt you'll want to hear this story anyway. You already know the essentials. There's no need for you to venture past this perfectly innocuous picture of Speedy Gonzales.


Okay, the rest of you? Here's what happened. We've been having mouse difficulties in the house since the temperature started dropping a few weeks ago. We tried some no-kill traps that the mice simply started avoiding. We're loathe to use any sort of poison, since we don't want the ferrets exposed to that stuff. And those traditional snap!-and-break-your-back traps are hideous, and certainly only a last resort.

So we've been going with glue traps, and had some success with them. When they catch one (about once a week) I come downstairs to see the trap has been disturbed and then look in logical places for the stuck rodent to have dragged it. (I need bigger glue traps.) Then I find it, pick it up in a supermarket plastic bag, and take it outside to the garbage. Sometimes—usually—the mice are still alive. A friend told me I should drown them, but I can't bring myself to do it.

It all breaks my heart a little, but I think, At least they're going into the garbage. Which has to be something akin to food heaven for a mouse.

So last night, I stayed up late on the computer, and came down to check the traps before bed. And there was a mouse, stuck in a glue trap on the kitchen counter (yeah. The counter... ugh.), and he looked up at me with this big, deep black eyes. It was horrible. He was... cute.

So, I steeled myself and did what I had to do. I put him and the trap in a plastic bag, and threw him into the garbage. But because it was late, and because I was lazy, and because I didn't want Kathy to wake up to the sound of our back door opening and closing, I stuck him in our kitchen trashcan.

If that wasn't a bad mistake, I wouldn't be telling you this story.

This morning, I looked over the kitchen (no new mice) and remembered I had to take out the trash, even with the bag half-full. So I opened up the lid to get it, and the mouse scurried out. Somehow he'd gotten free of the trap, but couldn't get free of the trash can until I'd opened it.

I friggin' jumped a foot in the air. I spent the next couple minutes trying to catch the mouse with an old Kool-whip container—I had him cornered behind the trash can—but he escaped. He scurried under the radiator, free again. And, having been completely unprepared for this confrontation, I was and remained completely and utterly skeeved by the encounter.

And now I know he's out there. Waiting. With revenge in his cute, cute eyes.

Rob