The Mouse's Tale

By Philip Lear

Last night after dinner Debbie and Joe were sitting in the kitchen when out of the corner of his eye, Joe spotted a mouse scurrying across the floor into a little hole besides the dishwasher. It wasn't any puny lethargic white lab mouse or one of the tiny gray ones they feed to snakes in pet stores.

He could see that it was sleek and clean looking. It was bigger and had a shiny coat shaded in beautiful browns and grays. The mouse must have come in from the woods behind his house, he thought.

Debbie saw it too and nearly jumped out of her skin. She jumped up and let out a little yelp. She looked like she was going to climb up on her chair. 

“Don't you have any appreciation of the beauty in nature? “ he asked.

“Beauty? That thing!”

“Yes that mouse.”

She looked at him, a pleading look and put her arm on his, “Joe, you've got to get rid of it.”

“What's the big deal if we have a mouse running around the house?” he asked. “If you knew all the things that were living between the walls you'd be freaking.”

Over the years they had had a few rats and mice in the house and Joe was always able to catch them. Looking back he felt proud of keeping his house intruder free. But somehow this time it was different. He felt a kind of respect for the little critter.

 “The big deal is that I don't like them in my house,” Debbie said. “They're dirty and they get in the food and the dishes.”

"I always wanted a pet," he chided. "But this isn't quite what I had in mind. "

“Very funny,” she replied. “How about if I stop cooking until the thing is caught?”

"Don't worry, " he said.  "Tomorrow I'll go over to Home Depot and buy some sticky traps. But right now I'm going out. I have my weekly bridge game. "

“You're not going to leave me here with that thing? Are you?”

“ Don't worry he won't hurt you.”

****

 That night he went to the bridge club and Sheila, a cat lover was there.

"I have a mouse in my house, " Joe said.

"Very poetic," she replied." I have five cats in my house and have no problems. They catch anything that moves. "

"I used to have cats, " he said." But the last one I had, Mittens, took a chunk out of the palm of my right hand.  It was not a nice animal.  But I kept him for a long time.  You know how it is with kids.  You can’t just get rid of a pet because they're nasty.  The kids would be crying that daddy was cruel to animals. So I kept that cat for the next eight years."

"Well, if you want a cat, "she said, "there's a nice five year old male tabby that will be available."

"I'll think about it, " he said." But I certainly couldn't take it before November.  I'll be away for the whole month of October."

"It will still be available in November, "she said.

He thought about it. Which would be worse- having a mouse or having a cat? Domestic animals weren't the greatest. There were those accidents on the carpet and the torn upholstery. Who needs that? He thought.

Tom, Joe’s partner in the bridge game said, "mice are such a pain. I live by the woods and they're everywhere in my house. And when they die in the walls they smell. They even ate the sparkplug wires on my antique ford. But I found this rotary trap that catches multiple mice at one time.  It's terrific.  But mice are fierce carnivores.  So you have to get them out of the trap before they kill each other.  Then it's a real mess washing out the traps."

"You mean you don't toss the trap?  " Joe asked.

"Toss them? Hell no. Those traps are $12 each. "

Yuck, he thought.  Having to clean the remains of half eaten mice out of the trap.

The next morning Joe went over to the Home Depot and bought four sticky traps and after dinner placed two of them in the kitchen with a nice chunk of peanut butter neatly in the center of each. 

For the next couple of hours he went downstairs and worked on the computer. But then he heard funny scraping noises coming from the kitchen.  He walked upstairs and peeked in.  There on the floor by the dishwasher was the mouse with its tail stuck in the sticky trap struggling fiercely to get free. It had dragged the sticky trap halfway across the room and was still going.

Ha, Joe thought. I've got him now. He strutted down the hallway into the bedroom room where Debbie was reading.

"I just wanted to tell you that I caught it, " he announced.

She hardly looked up from the book she was reading.

"So," she said. "They shouldn't have been in the house in the first place."

“Maybe we should hire a security guard to patrol so we don't get any of them,” he quipped.

But a few minutes later when he walked back into the kitchen, the trap had been pulled to the other side of the room and the mouse was gone. Wow, he thought. This guy is really tough.

But it didn't feel any too good when he went into the bedroom to report the escape to Debbie. 

"What do you mean it escaped?  Call an exterminator.  Get a cat. Do something."

"Don't worry," he said. "They normally don't eat humans."

"You're so witty," she answered.

"I'll protect you tonight,” he said snuggling up to her. But she turned away and kept reading.

Before going to bed that night he put out two fresh traps bated with peanut butter and again placed them strategically.  Joe felt confident that when he awoke the next morning the mouse would be and the trap.

About 3:00 in the morning he heard the scraping sound again.  Joe got out of bed, and went to see what was happening.  The traps had been moved around the room and the mouse was gone along with some of the peanut butter. 

Joe didn't say anything to Debbie. He just replaced the traps where they had been the night before.

The next morning he went over to Lowies looking for a better mousetrap. Maybe they had different ones that would be equal to the task. There was a man standing next to him in the aisle looking at the array of traps.  He was wearing coveralls and a red plaid shirt.  He was about Joe's age, maybe 50 or so, short and stocky. The man looked like someone who would really know what to do.

"What do you use to catch mice?  " Joe asked.

"I use a cat.  That's the best thing.  My cat catches them before they get in the house."

My wife would love this guy, Joe thought.

"But if you didn't have a cat what would you use?  "

"I would use the regular spring trap.  They never fail.  Snap and its' neck is broken,  " he said as he released the spring on the trap on the shelf in front of him.

"I like the sticky traps," Joe said.

"I don't," the man said. "They're still alive when you catch them."

Joe didn't tell the guy about last night's sticky trap debacle. But then up on the higher shelf he saw these big sticky traps on the shelf next to the bait. They were twice the size of the ones he bought at Home Depot.  The label read 'Rat Man Traps'. These ones are industrial strength he thought and bought four of them.

That night after dinner Joe set up two traps in key locations putting a little scoop of peanut butter in the center of each trap and for added affect, he placed a raisin in the center of the peanut butter. The traps almost looked like little desert platters. A feast fit for a mouse, he thought.

The next morning Joe got up around six and went into the kitchen to see what was doing.  There caught in the trap next to the dishwasher was the mouse.  It was on its side twitching but still alive. The thing didn't seem as big as the last time and its tail was messed up from the previous trap encounters.

He scooped up the trap and mouse on a piece of shirt cardboard, walked out on to his deck and flung the mouse over the stockade fence into the woods.  He was glad to get rid of it even knowing that on the sticky trap in the woods the mouse would be fair game for the other animals. He thought briefly about going behind the fence and freeing it from the trap but didn’t.