MAN VS. MOUSE

For the last week, I’ve been engaged in a battle of epic proportions. When I was cleaning out the shed, a mouse skittered out of one of the kids’ toy buckets. After I finished screaming, I did the only logical thing a woman in my circumstances could do. I put the house up for sale and fled the neighborhood with the clothes on my back.


Okay, not exactly. Though that was my first thought after seeing the droppings and the nest the thing was building. Instead, I set out a trap and went merrily on my way.

The next day, Lauren reached into the bin to get a ball and screamed like someone was either cutting her legs off or forcing her to wear red shorts with a clashing pink top. (Oh the horror of being unfashionably dressed). The mouse trap lay untouched at the back of the shed as the thing skittered across the floor, climbed the wall and ducked out a small hole near the roof.

As soon as I calmed Lauren down, I grabbed the trap and put it near the hole. This mouse made my little girl cry and swear off all sports requiring balls. It’s on. It’s so on.

The next day, I opened the shed door to check the trap and there the mouse was again. It skittered up the wall, looked at me with its beady little eyes and practically waved as it made it’s way out the hole. No doubt the thing was chuckling to itself.

“Look at the fat slow woman who can’t climb walls and fit through small holes. Have a salad, lady. Or chew through all the boxes in the shed if you wanna stay thin. That’s what I do.”

I concluded that I had the trap too far from the opening, so I moved it closer and shut the shed door, convinced the thing would now find the peanut butter so irresistible compared to cardboard boxes, it wouldn’t be able to resist.

The next day, I opened the shed door again to be greeted by the mouse. This time, it almost laughed out loud as it saluted me and scampered out its small hole. The trap had somehow snapped and fallen through the hole onto the ground without catching a thing.

Learning from my mistakes, I set the trap a little farther from the edge of the hole, so I’d be sure to catch the little rodent. Guess what happened when I opened the shed door today? Oh never mind. You can probably hear the mouse’s laughter from wherever you happen to be. The trap was sprung, but I’d put it so close to the shed roof that the boards had stopped it from shutting.

This mouse must have done a stint as Jerry in those old Tom and Jerry cartoons. Because you can’t kill it. You can’t catch it. And it laughs at you for being fat.

It’s on. It’s so on.