Mouse VICTORY!

We've had a mouse in our kitchen for, oh, probably a few weeks. At first we thought, "maybe if we don't leave stacks of dirty dishes, it'll go away." Then it ate a huge chunk of my pear that was in the fruit bowl on the counter, and that was war. Humane war, of course. My mom was coming out here, so she brought some live traps we had given my dad years ago (he tried them once and declared that they didn't work.)

The first time we caught the mouse, we were somewhat unprepared for it. The traps are little, and you can't just leave the mouse in there indefinitely... so Charles decided to put it in the trash can, which is at least knee-high. He covered the top with a colander, but then realized that there are two handle-holes near the top... and the mouse jumped out, on its first try! It can jump, like, way way higher than Super Mario. It then proceeded to run down the stove burner (not unlike Mario and the sewer pipes.)

The second time, I was prepared. I had made a mouse habitat out of a large tupperware that I normally used to store sheets and blankets. It was complete with a little paper teepee for the mouse to hide in, a handful of peanuts, and a water dish. Foolishly, I assumed that the handful of peanuts would distract it from trying to escape. I should have remembered that "the hunger for human rights (or mouse rights, if you will) is stronger than the hunger for food." (from Sonnenallee.) In under three hours, the mouse gnawed a hole in the handle of the tupperware big enough for it to escape. I found the little blue plastic shavings in the morning, arranged in the shape of the letters "ha ha," at the base of the tupperware. Megan declared him "brilliant."

This left us with the unpleasant situation of an increasingly ballsy mouse, and no reliable way to contain him if caught. I was pretty sure that he could shapeshift-- or at the very least, if cuffed in tiny chains and immersed in water, would immediately emerge like Houdini and take a bow. Possibly with some pyrotechnics. My solution was a $3 metal bucket from the hardware store, fitted with a lid from one of my pots. (For some reason, this is astronomically less gross than just storing the mouse in the pot itself.)

Last night at 3 a.m., I heard the telltale rattling of the rocking mousetrap. I transferred the culprit into the relatively small bucket- the glass lid gave me my first good look at him, as he raced around a couple of times before hiding in the paper towel tube. He was not that cute. His eyes were HUGE, but not in an adorable baby kind of way, more in a preternatural superbionic mouse that you don't want in your kitchen way.

I was so excited about catching him (and apprehensive about both his shapeshifting powers and the phonology presentation I wanted to edit in the morning) that I decided to take him down to the arboretum right away.

I opened the lid, but he stayed inside the paper towel tube. I picked it up and put it on the ground. I photographed him.

After his immense eyes recovered from being blinded by my flash, he stuck his nose out and tested the scene with his whiskers for a long, cold minute or two before scampering off... not into the underbrush, but down the sidewalk. I guess he's kind of a city mouse.

Now we just have to see if he was a bachelor, or the patriarch of a large family. Actually, Charles wants one of them as a pet, so I guess we'll hope the mouse has at least one brother.

The winning baits, by the way? A pinto bean, a chunk of cooked green pepper, and cheese shavings. We like to change it up.