We’ve Got a Live One

So I went to the hardware store to look for mouse traps. The guy at the front of the store said, “sticky or snap?”

“Are those my only options?” I asked him, at which point he looked at me scornfully and replied, “well we have the ‘have-a-heart’ traps.”

I asked him what he recommended to put in the trap to attract the mouse and he said that while conventional wisdom says cheese, in fact meat is a better mouse magnet. He insisted that chicken does the trick and added, “the greasier the better.”

Suddenly I was envisioning a cube of putrid ham rotting in a mouse trap on my living room floor. Luckily, the instructions on the trap recommended peanut butter so I went with that. I put the trap on the floor and then fled.

An hour and a half of yoga later I returned. It was dark in my apartment. Damn. That meant that if there was a mouse in the trap, I would have to deal with it minus my fearless roommate.

I walked over to the contraption and sure enough, the little trap door was closed. Of course, the doors close really easily so I considered for a moment that perhaps my stomping around the apartment had caused the trap to close. A moment later I heard a scratching noise coming from the trap.

Jackpot. Small problem though, I couldn’t do it.

Luckily I only had to be alone with the trapped mouse for about 30 minutes. My roommate came back from the library and I told her the good news.

“Now we can set it free,” I told her. She asked me if I needed help taking it outside. Silly girl.

“Well yes, because I can’t pick up a small gray box with a mouse inside.” So we walked the little guy a few blocks away to a park, put the box on the ground and he sprinted into a pile of dead leaves. I was so relieved as we walked back to our apartment, but had to turn around a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t following us home.