I'd dealt with mice before. I don't just mean when I lived in Mexico, I mean in the Middle East (Southwest Asia). Back a few months ago there was a mouse that lived in our tent for a very short while.

Short thanks to me.

Mouse Number One Gnaws the Dust

Everybody was doing their own thing, just passing the time. Then the mouse showed itself, but only for a brief second. Just long enough to see where it was headed, but not long enough to do anything about it. We were so very bored, though--so I did the only logical thing: I went near to where I thought the mouse was hiding, and I started stomping on the floor, while yelling non-obscenities.

My plan, of course, was to be silly. Little did I know that I was wearing my Death Boots!

The mouse, out of fright I suppose, escaped from his cache...only to end up flattened under the random floor poundings of my boot. Once I realized the mouse had run under my boot, I looked at it, stunned--then I walked back to those whose attention I'd drawn and announced that the mouse was dead.

Mice Number Two and Three Gnaw the Dust

More recent mouse spottings occured a few days ago (here in Iraq). Sergeant Vu had a mouse in his tent. He didn't have to force the mouse to Death, the mouse went willingly, and without asking, mind you. Sergeant Vu is a packrat (no pun intended), and he has, among his many possessions, a bug zapper. But he didn't keep the aforementioned apparatus hanging up high, he kept it on the ground. The mouse, for better or for worse, found this bug zapper gravely interesting.

Specialist Orozco had a mouse, too. He worked even less than Sergeant Vu to kill it. The mouse ran around in his tent for a bit, then decided to hide underneath one of the cots. Its speed helped it win the battle against Orozco, but killed it to lose the war. It was running so fast, it didn't see the leg of the cot right in front of it--so it ran headfirst into the leg and broke its neck.