Normally at 2 a.m., everyone at our house is fast asleep, but if you ever read any of my columns, life at our house is anything but normal. Still, after almost 20 years of marriage, it’s nice to know I can do things that surprise The Wife.
I know that because she said so when she found me still in my pajamas, crawling around the kitchen floor in the dark, with only a small penlight for illumination, mumbling over and over, “I’ll find you. You gotta be here somewhere.”
A light sleeper due to years working at the fire department, I was now following the scratching noise that had been just loud enough to wake me. “Sweetie, are you okay?” The Wife was clearly questioning my early morning grasp on reality. I didn’t hear her and kept crawling and mumbling.
That is until she flipped the wall switch on, throwing the kitchen from pitch dark to the stark white light provided by the LED overhead fixture. To say the instant illumination startled me would be an understatement – I bolted up, striking my head on the underside of the table.
The flood of light also startled my prey. A little gray mouse with the cutest black eyes darted from its hiding place under the stove … and ran right across The Wife’s bare feet. She now was also startled.
At 2:10 a.m., The Wife, Mr. Mouse, and I are all now fully awake. The Wife pointed, shouting, “There he goes! Don’t hurt him. He’s so cute.”
I had to admit, the little gray mouse was adorable. By the time I could retrieve a large towel from the bathroom to throw over our little cheese-loving visitor, The Wife shouted again, “He just went under the door!”
A week earlier, I had replaced the sticky trap on the floor of the hot water tank closet because we had caught Mr. Mouse’s cousin stuck to it. Opening the door this time, I was expecting to see him also stuck. Then, after a quick disposal outside, The Wife and I could go back to bed. It was not to be. Instead, Mr. Mouse had transformed into Mighty Mouse, the flying cartoon mouse from my childhood.
At 2:20 a.m., Mighty Mouse scurried towards a sticky death when, at the last moment, he gave a mighty leap, flying clean over the sticky trap before disappearing into the darkness of the closet.
I asked The Wife if she had any more diet candy bars – and not because I was getting hungry. Last month we had found a half-eaten diet bar and a dead mouse. (Makes you wonder. Is a diet candy bar that kills a mouse really good for humans to eat?) “No, that was the last …” She trailed off, then shouted, “There he goes!” Mighty Mouse scurried out of the kitchen and into the living room.
At 2:30 a.m., armed with a penlight in one hand and a towel in the other, I was crawling around the living room looking under everything. Suddenly, Mighty Mouse darted. I threw a towel but came up empty. He may have been small but he was so very fast. After another 30 minutes of searching, The Wife and I were too tired to continue the chase so we went back to bed.
At 8 a.m., Yours Truly entered the giant hardware store with the orange roof to purchase traps. No, not the $1.25 sticky traps, but the more humane $12 live traps. I bought four. The instructions stated, “Bait with peanut butter and let trapped mouse go free at least a mile from your house.”
Why? I don’t know. Guess a mouse can find its way back to your house if you just go down to the end of the street and let it out. After baiting the traps with peanut butter, I placed them strategically up against the walls just before going to bed.
At 2 a.m., I heard scratching. Mighty Mouse was at it again. I leapt out of bed with my penlight to investigate. The sound of me crashing to the floor woke The Wife. Guess I really shouldn’t be leaping in the dark.
Shining the penlight at the bedroom trap, I whispered, “It’s Him.” We both were astonished as to what the light revealed. The heavy trap had actually been moved a foot away from the wall. Our mouse had transformed once again. Now Mighty Mouse was Hercules.
That was over a week ago. I still check the traps every morning and night, but we haven’t heard or seen from our little cute gray mouse with the black eyes since. The Wife asked me last night where did I think he went.
I answered, “Where all mice want to go. The same place Little One and Sweet Caroline want to go … Disney World, of course.”
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
