A Mouse Near the House with a Plan for the Man

You might suppose a lame-brained weekly columnist who has already written 730 words about a mouse he can't catch would not torture his few faithful readers with 730 more words about the same darn topic. Wrong-o, cheese-breath.

Frankly, I intend to keep reporting on this battle of wits until (a) either the mouse or I definitively win, or (b) you faithful readers say, "Enough rodent stories! It's the mouse that bored!"

But I can't worry about that right now, because my mouse "problem" has seriously escalated. It started with my boys. They were playing outside the other day when a couple of their friends spotted a furry, furtive shape lurking near the shrubbery and started freaking out. It was only me, doing some yard work.

I shooed them to the back yard where another round of shrieking started. I figured someone stuck a water balloon down someone else's pants, but then, in voices that could be heard throughout the four suburbs adjoining ours, a half-dozen boys began shouting "RATS! DAD/MR. STUART! YOU'VE GOT RATS!!!"

I instantly knew three things. (1) They had seen the mouse; (2) The news that the Stuart property was rat-infested was spreading via cell phone, instant messaging, and PDA to every suburb adjoining the four suburbs adjoining ours; (3) The only way to squelch this rumor was to once and for all set traps to catch those noisy kids. Oh, and the mouse.

Though I failed with the live capture trap described in my previous column, I still wanted to bring 'im back alive. So I went mousetrap shopping at a "big box store," which always turns out to be a live capture trap for my money. I bought about three dozen things I didn't know I needed, along with the one thing I did: A four-pack of glue-filled tray traps.

The moment I opened them, I knew they'd work. They were pre-baited with scrumptious looking little seeds, and pre-scented to smell like Minnie Mouse's boudoir. And how sticky is the gluey substance, you might ask? Well, let me just say that it's been quite a challenge typing this column with a plastic tray stuck to my left thumb!

All this adds up to a very effective trap. But I didn't catch a single mouse. Ha! Fooled ya! I caught four! Apparently they'd commuted from surrounding suburbs to negotiate turf issues with the rat they heard was living here.

The mice trapped on my trays looked nothing like the one pictured on the package. That illustrated rodent sits stoically, its paws daintily resting in glue, as though it's leaving footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Whereas my mice were glue-mersed from tail to snout, the result of thrashing around as though they were at a Zakk Wylde concert.

All that was left was to release them. But the directions for ungluing the mice were a little vague: "Put on gloves, apply vegetable oil, and release with pencil." That was it.

My kids thought I was supposed to apply the vegetable oil to myself, which led to a careless comment by me about "slip and slide" parties, which led to a trip to the big box store to buy them a Slip 'n Slide water slide, which was their price for not telling mom about "the interesting new use for vegetable oil that dad just taught us!"

But that was after the first two mice were successfully transported to a woody area about a mile from my house, oiled up and released, looking like escapees from a fondue pot. When I returned home, I discovered the other two trapped mice, and that's when my mouse problem seriously escalated: one mouse wasn't humanely released. It humanely escaped, somehow leaping OFF the glue tray, with Michael Jordan-like grace, and escalating completely out of the beach bucket where I'd put him!

He escaped into my garage. Where he's still roaming around. Where my wife - who's positively horrified by mice, doesn't know he's roaming.

That's my newest mouse problem - keeping this from my wife. So I'm counting on you to stay mum about it. If you don't, I'll send my kids to your house and have 'em holler - at full four-suburb volume - "YOU'VE GOT RATS!!!"

# # #

TakefiveT5@yahoo.com