THE MOUSE STORY

Yea, it’s cute and all, but not in your house.

Last night, well early this morning at 4 a.m., there was a commotion in the kitchen that woke me up. My first thought was that James was up eating again, but then I realized he was still in bed. After I totally woke up, I realized it was a mouse in my pantry eating something. I decided to interrupt his party and got up and marched in the kitchen and flipped on the light. To my surprise I saw no gray streak running for cover. I stood there for a minute a bit dumbfounded wondering where he could be, when I realized the mouse was about eye height on the shelf, sitting on a canister, and acting frozen so I would not see him. He was still as a statue, his bulging black eyes just staring at me. (I always thought they bulged like that due to the trap squishing them to death…..guess I was wrong). I told him I could see him and took a step closer. He moved over a few inches and got behind a bottle of olive oil. To my surprise, he sat up so as to fit behind it and not hang out the side. He was a smarty this mouse. I then moved the bottle and he scampered up one level to the next shelf up which is more out of reach. We have the wire rack type shelves so I could look up under and see him in the back behind a cheese grater. I looked around to see what he had been chewing on that had made such a noise and found he was in a bag of Dove dark chocolates that had a really crinkly sounding bag. He (or she) had chewed through one of the aluminum wrappers and taken a few bites of chocolate. Thinking fast, I found a mouse trap and glued a piece of chocolate to it using peanut butter to make it stick. I carefully placed it on the shelf right next to the bag of chocolates. I figured if I went back to bed, the little guy would think the coast was clear and head back to the chocolate that he now had a taste for. I flipped off the light and climbed back into bed hoping to hear a loud crack soon. Instead, I heard James ask me what was going on. I told him there was a mouse in the pantry. He said we should catch it. I said “yea, right” (roll your eyes). So we both got back up and he fetched a pair of gloves from the garage and we headed back into the kitchen. We flipped on the light and sure enough……the mouse was still where I left him. He had a less sure look on his face when he saw James. It is like he knew this guy was not playing games like I was. James grabbed the step stool and got into position to grab the mouse. He moved the grater and thrust his hand at the mouse. The mouse then launched himself into the air, rickashayed of James’ eyeball, yes his eye, and disappeared into thin air. James, holding his gloved hand over his eye says “did you see where he went?” I had no idea where he went, I was just wondering if James’ eye was OK. Luckily he was fine; the mouse had not really hurt him. We gave up and went back to bed. As I lay there trying to fall back asleep I kept wondering if he meant to blind James or if he just got lucky to hit him in the eye……..I also was thinking, we should have left him alone and he would be in the trap by now instead of running free and looking for new stuff to chew on.