Mice Thrice

As long as we’re on the subject of critters…

Last winter, we got a mouse, but not on purpose. Adorable little droppings began showing up under the kitchen sink; we had not seen the offender, but we didn’t need much more of a clue than that.

Of course, our first thought was to trap the little guy, but in the Wrobel house, nothing is simple; certainly standard mousetraps were out.

Mice are cute, but only when they are somewhere well beyond your house, neighborhood even, most preferably behind glass in a retail environment. But we Wrobel’s ain’t killin’ folk (except when it comes to anything with more than four legs and/or eyes), so I went online to find the perfect, mouse-friendly trap.

Voilá! There it was. For the mere expenditure of an empty paper towel roll, some duct tape, a bucket and an enticing treat, we were guaranteed to capture the rascal and send him on his way. David set it up and two days later there he was, deep in the recesses of a screaming orange Home Depot bucket, scrabbling out – not an option.

The Web site clearly stated that to lose a mouse, you must take it a minimum of five miles from your house, lest it come back to revisit. Pish tosh! Five miles for a tiny little mouse? By the time he made even a mile trek back on those teeny little legs, he’d surely have perished due to old age! I loaded the bucket into the trunk and drove him to the river, about ½ mile away. I overturned him onto the frozen dirt and away he scurried.

Okay, you already know what happened, don’t you, smartie pants? Two days later, he was back.

Again with the trap. A few days later he appeared in the bucket, and this time I drove him five miles away to a church parking lot. See? I do learn.

But apparently he does not. HE CAME BACK. Yes, he did. You may say, “Now that’s just drama. It had to be another mouse.” I sincerely do not believe it was. We’d never had a mouse before and this was just too coincidental. He knew what he was doing.

AGAIN with the trap. Again with the bucket and paper towel roll and enticing treat. This time David took him for a ride and left him about ten miles away, across the expressway. He hasn’t returned.

I do not believe it was for lack of trying. I know that he desperately wanted to come back home, to once again burrow through the familiar, miniscule, now-filled space under our sink, to leave his tiny Hanta virus-laden deposits amid the dish detergent, Windex and scouring pads. But alas, the mouse is no more. I figure he either found it too daunting to scamper ten miles or he got smushed on I-355 somewhere between Hobson and 75th. Either way, he’s most certainly in a better place than under our kitchen sink.