With the cooler fall temperatures our kitchen has
become a haven for warmth-seeking small rodents. Mornings would reveal
scattered crumbs, holes in the bread and other mice "deposits"
indicative of home-making activities.
Our story could be called "The Tale of Terry, the
Toaster and the Tail." Terry was making toast at breakfast one
morning. and sleepily thinking that he noticed a slight burning smell.
Before he could quite start to process this sensory input there was a
loud squeal immediately followed by a frantic form scrambling out of
the empty slot of the toaster, dropping onto the counter and shooting
across it to hide behind the electric can opener. Convinced that his
toast was possessed, Terry seized a long knife and brandished it at
the quivering object. Ripping away dishes and appliances crowding the
counter, he found himself face to face with... a mouse. After brief
stare down, activity broke loose again with the mouse scurrying to
avoid Terry’s knife jabs. And then... the mouse was gone. With
eyes widening, he picked up the only object left on the counter- the
electric can opener- and peered into the back. Nothing. Except for a
long, thin string... er tail! The tail disappeared into the depths of
the machinery. Hoping to scare it out, he activated the opener and
knife sharpener producing terrible grating noises to the ears of the
mouse inside not to mention Ana’s friends sleeping(?) in the
adjacent room. He grabbed the can opener and sprinted out to the
front porch to let the mouse escape much to the
amusement of neighbors who only knew that they saw only a distraught man fling open the
door and heave his electric can opener out.
That night, Ana and Jeanette bought mouse traps. We
swiftly executed one mouse in a conventional spring-latch trap. The
corpse was discreetly disposed of by Stan -- i.e. letting Koshka (meow)
bat it around a couple times then throwing it out into a storm drain
outside. Our conventional traps failed to work again however. The
little devils just licked the peanut butter off the trap without
tripping it. So Ana and Jeanette bought a so-called "glue trap," a
purchase to go down in infamy. Our second mouse got glued to the trap
one night. Ana woke up and did nothing save putting a bowl over it
supposedly so that it could get a good night’s sleep in a
darkened environment. She left a note for the men of the house to
handle it. The note was conveniently ignored in the morning by
our brave men and the task was left to Jeanette to snuff out the
little creature. She ended the rodent’s life in a non-violent,
painless manner i.e. dropping a brick on it, but only after agonizing
over various other terrible deaths: e.g. the terror of
being attacked by a cat while one’s feet are glued down.
- Most number of days without gunshots: 20
- Most number of smashed cars in front of house and in corner lot: 5
- Most number of neighborhood kids baking cookies in the kitchen: 13