After several fruitless sallies with the towel at the very bold mouse --alas, to no avail!, hence the term "fruitless"--I gave up. The mouse leapt from the counter, across the floor, and to parts unknown, i.e., parts invisible to me, in the crazy mouse-lair that is apparently my kitchen. The thought of it made me a little twitchy. I called the historian to announce this mouse activity, information which he absorbed with his customary equanimity.
Our cat has done a fair degree of mouse-killing this winter, as well. It's because we live on the verge of a big field, and it's been a very cold winter. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway. Luckily I had, with a fair degree of prescience, ordered this, in a very prudent set of four:
Humane Mouse Trap!
You bait it with a cracker smeared with peanut butter, which, in the fiendishly clever ("humane," they say in the ad--HA!) design of the trap, the mouse cannot ever reach, but can only smell! Thus, when the mouse enters the trap, driven mad by the divine aroma of roasted and ground nuts, the back door snaps and the mouse pounds the perforated walls with its little paws, saying "Attica! Attica!"
At this point, you take the contraption outside and release the rodent, preferably with a little blessing. "Vaya con dios, wee bastard," for instance.
Three mousies so far, and it's been only twenty-four hours since we set the traps. Tomorrow, we start the mad disinfecting. Like, forever.
Apparently you are supposed to whisper to the mouse that it will be happier in a different place, like say, your neighbors kitchen...and encourage them to go there, never to return to darken your door....either that or threaten the mouse that you will ge the non humane traps and get his mamma the next time he comes back. Whichever you feel suits you...
ReplyDeleteThis story has gotten better since I heard it told yesterday: "Vaya con dios, wee bastard" is my favorited addition to the retelling.
ReplyDeleteIn graduate school, I shared a house with two other students and, unbeknownst to us, a few mice. Once I found some macaroni in my bra drawer and I thought my (male) roommate had done it. So I put some macaroni in his room. He denied that he had done it. I even accused another graduate student who had visited for dinner one night. He also denied it. Then, one night, I saw a wee mouse scurry across my bedroom floor! I stayed over at Middlebrow's a lot. The male roommate found a whole colony in one of his bottom drawer, snuggled in with the long johns. Needless to say, he took care of the problem.
ReplyDeleteI don't envy you.
Doesn't the right to shelter extend to the mice of the world?
ReplyDeleteI admire you, though, for the humane mouse trap. Dr. Write and I have, perhaps, been guilty of using the classic kind of mouse trap. I'm afraid we turn quite savage when threatened by rodents.
well, I have an argentine uncle who once got out his pistol and shot at a rat that was running across the patio "indoor" ceiling (hard to explain) part of his house. (He missed, if you're wondering. And I don't think there was any Vaya con Dios uttered)
ReplyDeletewhat else is a landless, penniless, aristocrats (only in name) gauchos have to do?
I may be a biologist, but I SCREAM for The Don at such moments