Not crazy, not a mouse, not a bat . . .

Friends, Tibe is not crazy. There was something there. Let me start from the beginning of the day. Tibe has continued to sniff by the stove and Vita will perch there and watch it, but I had seen nothing. Then today, laboring over a deadline that I had already missed, I saw some small movement in the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I went into the family room thinking it was Vita in the kitchen, but she was sound asleep on the chair. The beloved was working in the dining room. I went back to stress writing.

Then, I see it, peering out from between the stove and the refrigerator. A mouse, I think. Then it peers out farther and farther. If it is a mouse, it is a big one. A very big one. One might even call it not a mouse, but a starts with r and rhymes with bat. Vita comes rushing in and sits across from where it is, staring it down and if it peers out too far rushing toward it. It then slinks back into its space. Vita does a good show, but after coming close to catching it one time, she looks up at me and say, Mama, this is a big one, we are going to need some back up, and Tibe isn’t going to cut it. He is focused, but doesn’t seem to have the capacity to catch and kill. This one is beyond me.

So I am, as you might imagine, completely freaked out. All of this is happening between 2:45 and 3:10 pm. The beloved is working in the dining room. I have to go to the post office to mail a few packages. I use the time to formulate my plan.

What does one do when there is a large mouse in the kitchen? A very large mouse? I have never faced this problem before. Well, I decide, we need a trap. A large trap. So after the post office, I drive to Menards, the local hardware and general purpose store. I buy a rat trap and a case to protect the rat trap from the dogs and the cat and some bait. It costs $19.

According to the Internet, rats are very smart, and it is not likely that they will enter a trap easily. I ignore this bleak fact. Back at home, I realize I must tell the beloved what we are facing. She reacts with the appropriate understated butch response. I suggest we are all going to need a little more strength than we ever anticipated for this life.

We feed the dogs. I set the trap. I place it exactly where I saw the rat two hours ago. We close all of the doors to the kitchen. I return to stress writing. Around 6:15, we hear a rustle, a ruckus, perhaps a snap, and a few beats of a body against plastic. That large, very large mouse, walked right into the trap less than an hour after I set it. I bagged the whole apparatus and took it out to the garbage. Goodbye, rodent friend. Tibe is still sniffing a little, but not with the same persistence. How it got in we do not know. We hope it is an anomaly. For now though, you might address me as ORK: original large, very large mouse killer.

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