Me and the mouse.
Whenever an animal or a bug gets into my home, since I can’t bear to kill anything, I usually trap it and throw it outside. I’ve done this even with creatures I’m terrified of, such as Hawaii’s poisonous centipedes and scorpions, and spiders that are as big as your fist.
Not so with this bold little mouse.
He woke me up in the middle of the night, scratching inside the closet that is two feet from my bed. And he wouldn’t leave, not even when I made threatening noises to scare him away. I shook Funk awake and told him what was happening and he uttered his usual, “Gloria, you’re hearing things.” However, since my husband wanted to live, he begrudgingly heaved himself out from our bed and opened the closet door. Sure enough, no mouse anywhere to be found.
The following morning, come to find, the mouse had apparently left the closet and moseyed on over to the kitchen, where he left me an up-yours!-present of mouse droppings scattered across the kitchen counter. Never one to pass up a dig, I said to my husband, “So, hearing things, huh?” then uttered a few more choice words to both man and mouse, after which, the traps came out.
Funk set one inside our closet and placed another near the metal leg of the gas fireplace in our living room, and three more in the kitchen.
That night, since Funk had to catch an early morning flight, he slept in the guest bedroom. Along about 2am, I was startled awake by one of the traps going off—Whap!—Bounce-Bounce. My initial thought was, “Wow. That was fast. We got him on the first try.”
Problem was, the trap didn’t stop going off.
Whap-whap-whap! Bounce-bounce-bounce!—ungodly sounds that went on for a good 20 seconds before finally growing still.
Of course, my husband was in the other bedroom sleeping on his only functioning ear, so he didn’t hear what I now suspected was a rat, given the creature didn’t instantly die.
I felt horribly guilty thinking about it having suffered for that long but was thankful he was now on the other side in rat heaven. Shaken, I was trying to fall back to sleep when a few minutes later, there it went again.
Whap-Whap-Whap! Bounce-Bounce-Bounce, even louder this time.
I couldn’t figure out what the whapping noise meant. I wondered if the trap had caught just the rat’s leg and if it was smashing the contraption against the floor trying to shake it loose.
By this time, I had blown this rat up to elephant-sized proportions.
I was afraid to go check it out. The noise went on forever and was sounding more ferocious by the minute. My mind was racing. I couldn’t believe that a rat had that much power to be making that much of a racket. I also couldn’t believe how creeped out I was. Huge noises were ringing throughout my pitch-dark home. I was afraid the rat would run around the house once he freed himself. Pulling the bed covers tight around me, I listened to the struggle, hoping the thing would die already.
It didn’t.
I was just about to go see what to do about it when the sound abated. Blessedly, a good ten minutes passed and I figured the thing had finally expired.
Nope.
Next thing I know, there it went the again. Only this time, it was followed by a clanging noise. WHAP-Whap-Whap. BOUNCE-Bounce-Bounce. CLING-CLANG-CLING-CLANG!
Apparently, the rat had scooted from the kitchen all the way into the living room and was banging his caught leg against the metal fireplace trying to shake the trap off.
As skeeved as I was, I couldn’t stand to think of it being tormented for this long, so I ran into the bedroom where my deadbeat husband slept and told him there was a live rat caught in the trap. I was afraid he’d get bit, so I kept screaming that he shouldn’t go near it, that he should get the broom and shove the frigging thing out the door. Grumpy guy that he is, he ignored me and headed straight for the living room.
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP! BOUNCE-BOUNCE-BOUNCE! CLING-CLANG-CLING-CLANG!!!, ever more savagely.
“Oh my God! Funk, don’t go near it!”
“Gloria, how the hell am I supposed to get rid of it if I don’t go near it?” he said in a nasty way. A way that made me think that it might not be so terrible if my husband got attacked by the thing.
Pushing that bad thought aside, I told Funk to turn on the lights while I ran for the broom.
At 3am, with the lights blazing and the broom in hand, we could finally see what we were dealing with. There in the trap was the mouse’s snout, his tail caught in a glue-trap that we’d set out ages ago because spiders had been eating me alive.
What seemed like an eternity later, Funk finally took action and swept the mouse outside and we went back to sleep. Well, he did. I was too upset by what just went down, to both me and the mouse.
The next morning, my son called and I told him what happened.
Him being a vegetarian, I figured I’d get a lecture about killing an innocent thing and was shocked to get empathy instead. But then came the sword to my heart. My son said, “You did have dad go outside and kill it, right?” Horrified, I responded that I was so upset that I didn’t think of doing that.
Here’s to you! if you also can’t kill anything but sometimes feel you must defend your territory. Hearing my son’s words, I instantly hung up the phone, braved up, and went outside fully prepared to put the thing out of its misery. Nothing doing. The mouse trap was there on the patio. The glue trap was there too. And the mouse? Nowhere in sight. Seems he’d loosed himself free afterall. Still, it’ll be a good long time before I set out another trap.
The Photo: I’m missing my beloved Hawaii so much. But I’m getting closer to being able to build my healing retreat. Just waiting on the green light so I can make plans to return this fall.
Disclaimer: Some people think I am too mean to Funk in the retelling of these stories. But he knows I’m just trying to provide a little humor to brighten your day. I’m not making fun of him—I’m actually poking fun at myself. The fact of our 45-year marriage is, my husband puts up with my anxious self quite nicely. And more, his ego is so humongous that he loves any and all attention and laughs himself silly whenever he’s reading a piece aloud so I can edit it better. Once he’s done reading, a common refrain from him is, “The Universe loves me!”