The weight of a mouse

I'm going to kill him. If not tonight, then tomorrow night. Or the next night. I'm patient. I can't say for sure when it will happen, but I will spill blood break his neck. I gave him every opportunity to leave and the fucker won't go .... so now he will die.

 That's right. I'm talking to you, you little gray bastard. You're going to die.

One morning a couple of weeks ago I zombie-walked into the kitchen just in time to see that little piece of shit up there scurry along the baseboard and duck in under the dishwasher. I shuddered, but I didn't scream. I talk to myself a lot, so I said, "Fuck me, there's a fucking mouse in my fucking kitchen. Fucking fucker."

It was a warm enough day so I did the humane thing: I opened the door to the porch and left it open so the little fucker could go back outside where he belongs.

I thought it worked. I didn't see any sign of him -- no sprinkles of little turds or torn open bags. Good, I thought. He took the opportunity and left. 

Nope. Either he didn't leave or he came back (I can see daylight between the door jam and the kitchen door. Mice can get in through very small cracks.)

I was at my computer the day before yesterday when I heard a mad rustling sound. I live by myself .... if I wasn't rustling, then somebody else was. I tiptoed into the kitchen and determined the rustling was happening in the plastic grocery bags I keep stored between the refrigerator and the stove.

I gave the stove a sharp tap with my foot. Usually that's enough to make a mouse freeze. Not this little bastard.

If anything his rustling grew louder and more desperate. Shit, I thought. (Yes, I even swear in my own head.) Now what do I do? He might be trapped in a plastic bag so he can't get out. Which is good. Except if I pull out the bags, I might pull him out too, and he might get out of the bag and bite me. And then if I don't somehow catch his dirty little ass and he gets away, I'll have to get shots in my stomach with a 2-foot-long needle every day for a month just in case the little fucker has rabies ...... Damn it. I wonder if it's too early for a glass of wine ..... Yes .... OK, but if he's caught in a plastic bag, that's not my fault. And if he dies, then all I have to do is throw out the plastic bag .... Only how will I know if he's dead in there? What if I pull the bags out too soon and he's just weak and he somehow gets a second wind and bites me .....

 And then another thought struck me: What if that perverted little fucker is engaging in an act of erotic suffocation in there? Eeeuuuwwww. I just do not roll that way. I mean, what if he had his little mouse dick in his hand right now and as his furry face turned blue he was ... What a disgusting creature! ..... And yet ....  Fuck. There's nothing I can do about this now.

I accepted my own helplessness as it concerned Mickey Mouse and decided to fix myself some breakfast. The rustling continued the whole time I sauteed red pepper and mushrooms ... mixed them with eggs and topped it all with Havarti cheese.

The idea that I was cooking my breakfast next to a perverted rodent almost made me lose my appetite, but common sense prevailed. This standoff could last for hours. A good breakfast can't be overrated in a situation such as this.

By the time I got out of the shower an hour or so later, the rustling had stopped. And then, frankly, I forgot about it.

On purpose. I'm not a fucking idiot. But I couldn't do anything about a mouse caught in a plastic bag, right? So I figured he either got out or he was going to die in there. I'd just deal with it if I started to smell mammal decomposition. It's a distinctive enough smell -- especially in a kitchen.

I can report that so far, so good. No decomp in the kitchen, although I bought some Vick's vapor rub just in case.

No, I don't think that little fucker died in a plastic bag because something much worse happened last night after I got home from karaoke. Much worse.

Using only a small LED flashlight so as not to arouse suspicion, I tiptoed to the free-standing cupboard I use for a pantry to sneak just one Lay's potato chip from the bag Chicken Grrrl brought over for us to eat while we drink Black Box white wine when we're rehearsed for a big private party we're playing on Saturday. Then and only then.

See, I promised Chicken Grrrl I wouldn't eat those chips unless we were eating them together. I know. It was stupid. It was futile. I was only going to eat one chip though. She wouldn't miss one chip, right?

Do not fucking judge me!

As I reached to the back of the shelf for the chip bag I noticed something that should not have been there. It was this.

The fucking evidence.

"No!" I cried. "No, you did not nibble a dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cup and just leave it there for me to find. You heartless, sadistic asshole bastard of a mouse, you."

I was beside myself. First because I had no idea there was a dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cup in my pantry. In my ongoing effort to curb my chocolate addiction, I haven't been buying much chocolate. In fact, I'm down to the Kroger value brand chocolate morsels from the bottom of the pantry ... That's how low I've stooped.

And yet, right under my nose was a dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cup and that little fucking bastard nibbled it and then left it on the front of the shelf where I would find it. This could not be a mistake. He didn't even finish it! He just ruined it and left it there.

It was like he flipped me a little mouse bird.

Game on, you little asshole.

But that's not all. The second reason I was in a bind was because I couldn't possibly put those chips back into the pantry. The thin barrier of a Lay's potato chip bag would be nothing to a stealthy bandit like this mouse. Look what he did to a foil wrapping!

No, only one thing would do: I had to eat the chips. All of them. I had to pour a glass of Black Box chardonnay and eat the fucking Lay's potato chips.

The little fucker made me break my promise to Chicken Grrl. I ate every chip and licked the salt off the inside of the bag. And it's that fucking mouse's fault.

Game on, you little gray fucker.

I think we've established that I'm not afraid to kill. I've killed much bigger prey and cooked and eaten it too. Not that I intend to cook and eat a mouse. This isn't Survivor, although I have a post in the works about that too.

No, this murder will be simply for the necessity of killing. I have to save my chocolate and my integrity.

I'm no stranger to mouse murder. One time when I was in high school I killed a mouse with a red plastic baseball bat and threw its lifeless carcass into the front yard of the trailer where I was babysitting. I wrote a poem about it .... I should post that tomorrow. 

So I stopped by the hardware store and bought 4 traps. Not the live traps -- we've established I can't really deal with a living mouse who probably has some weird, disgusting sexual asphyxiation perversion and, worse yet, who disrespected the dark chocolate.

I spread the little plastic cheese slice on the trap last night with peanut butter and left it out in the kitchen. As I carefully set it down on the floor so as not to snap the trap shut on my finger (which would hurt like a son of a bitch), I called out, "Here's some nice all-natural peanut butter, you little bastard. Come and get it."

Here, mousy, mousy....

I went to bed secure in the knowledge that I'd be putting a mouse in the dumpster this morning.

When I came down this morning .... Nothing. Well, not nothing. Just the trap with the peanut butter and no dead mouse with a broken neck.

Duh. If the mouse didn't finish the dark chocolate Reese's peanut butter cup, that probably means he doesn't like peanut butter that much.

Or that he's dead in a plastic bag and decomp hasn't reached critical odification.

Or he slipped back outside and is wanking off to rodent snuff porn.

Or the little fucker outsmarted me and the next thing I find will be a half-nibbled cheap chocolate morsel in plain sight somewhere in the kitchen .....

To be continued ......