Sorry Seuss fans, don’t get excited. This is not my foolish follow-up to his fedoraed feline. I lack the fine doctor’s rhyme, don’t have the time, and I’m just not that creative (or kid-friendly). But I am motivated by a recent riddle that I’ll share instead. (But if you want to save yourself some time, skip to the end for a short recap poem).
What’s worse than finding a mouse in your house? If you recall the old joke about the worm in your apple, similarly asked, you might assume I found half a mouse in my house. However, you’d be wrong, deadmau5 wrong.
Just think about it. A rodent cut in half would not survive, not like your half-eaten squirming worm would. And a non-living pest is much easier to dispose of than its living brethren. Even if it somehow could survive, it would be much easier to trap, on top of its freakish curiosity appeal. Let’s say our miracle mouse somehow (like a miracle) left its hindquarters behind. It (I’d say he or she, but after its lower half is gone, what’s the point in guessing a gender? We’re not talking about a titmouse), might still steal my food, but would lack the ass to leave behind pellets in its wake. Now for random argument’s sake, say miracle mickey lost his top half, he might still shit a bit, but couldn’t ingest my edibles any longer. Either implausible scenario surely beats a full-bodied critter that both eats and shits (and runs faster). Maybe Minnie’s cut down her length, yet still maintains her strength (think Gus Fring’s final face-off); can you picture the bifurcated mouse trying to move anywhere? It would be like paddling a canoe solely on one side of the boat – you’d just spin in circles. So no, I’ll take a half-dead or half-zombied little critter over a nimble four-legged pest any day, if given the choice. Please don’t attempt to disprove the preceding theory, or expect PETA to protest the twisted lab experiment.
Worse than finding a mouse in your house? How about losing a mouse in your car?
I married a Buddhist. She did not convert this half-Catholic, half-Jewish, wholly atheist author to her religion, since Buddhism is a philosophy more than a cult. But she does discourage me from killing things, so my homicidal impulses have been harnessed for the last eight years and counting (at least when she’s around). This means no mean mouse death traps: no glues, no battery-powered shock treatments, no spring-loaded backbreakers, no tiny guillotine that might slice mice into two to test an earlier hypothesis. No, just a harmless humane container to catch a thief and hold him safely inside until I (or Sai) can release him outside.
I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I’m an idiot, but you’re getting ahead of yourself here. I know that if you catch one inside and immediately loose outside, the sneaky bastard will just run right back in. This is why I’ll box him in (so he can’t see where he’s going), drive a serpentine path (with the GPS turned off – in case the little mouse ears are perked up and listening) to a distant destination several miles away before unloading in your neighborhood (so take that for calling me an idiot). Along the long way, I’ll play loud music to further discombobulate Fievel (shoot, just started and I’m already running out of famous mice), but if he’s savvy enough to find his way back, then he’s earned it, enough to repeat the same game, though I usually drop in different directions just to be safe, and to share the wealth with others who might be wondering what it’s like to have a mouse in their house.
So, first the fucker finds himself trapped in a translucent green plastic cage (with air holes), for however many hours (or days) it takes me or the missus to note his presence. We’ll then place his container inside another opaque package (usually an empty Amazon box – the shopaholic wife seems to have these receptacles delivered daily just in case we catch an occasional uninvited furry guest. Surely there’s a cheaper way…). Then we’ll drive the aforementioned circuitous route before throwing him out. By the time the ride stops, Jerry has been caged, covered up, forced to listen to my music, and depending on the song, maybe even my own off-key karaoke. That’s usually enough to traumatize the mini-terrorist (a similar strategy was used in the W era at Gitmo, though I didn’t lend my voice to that cause), such that the hairy bastard will cower in fear until I upend the opened trap and set him loose to terrorize another homeland. A simple plan.
But not this time. Not this mighty monster. I should have realized he (may have been a she, but writing he or she every time gets old, so I’ll declare he to be of the masculine sort. Any feminists fighting for equal representation in mouse tales can damn me to hell, oh well) was different from the typically docile prisoners (you know – like the lazy lady mice), when he jumped around like a House of Pain and rattled his cage enough to catch my ear from across the room. [In retrospect, there’s Mickey, Mighty, Fievel, Jerry, and Mr. Jingles for famous male mice, to Minnie for the females. Maybe it is time for Title IX to level the playing field.]
I thought about ignoring him, and leaving the latest catch for Sai to deal with, but because I’m clinging to my current position as the best husband she’s ever had (so far), figured it best to handle myself. So I boxed him up and hit the road, heading toward the office looking for a fine refuge along the way where he could play, stay, stray, or whatever, as long as it’s away from my home. NIMBY for me. We listened to modern rock, and I serenaded the restless travel companion with the tunes I liked, as I bypassed plenty of places where we could have stopped, until there we were, at the far end of the parking lot at my office, trying to be inconspicuous in our parting of ways. [Although I doubt any of my bosses will stumble across this story, nor many coworkers, if any do, I offer the following defense: First, I’m not trying to infest the home office, but I trust that it has better (read – less Buddhist) defense mechanisms in place than my place. Second, I was dropping him not at the front door, but over by the old storage garage where he could live a Wall-e life of solitude or something.]
In my Monday morning stupor (or general stupidity), and in my attempt at subtlety (hanging out the window waving a mousetrap around with a critter becoming living litter is probably frowned upon by most strangers, and surely won’t do much to help a workplace reputation; I personally despise the puffers who toss their butts out the window – the world is not your ashtray, ash-hole!), I popped the lid, holding the trap in my right hand, turned to my left and powered down the driver’s side window, and suddenly realized my timing was off, the sequence was wrong, as my housemate leapt up like a frog, a foot above my handheld holding cell, arcing back down to hit the floorboard running, and disappeared. $%#&!! I thought, and surely verbalized, though I’m not sure of the specific profanity used (take your pick, I likely used that one too). I hopped out the door, and raced around to the passenger’s side, hoping that he was just waiting for me to be a gentleman and get the door for him before he’d leave (primadonna). As you’ve likely guessed by the thousands of words wasted, my guest was disinclined to acquiesce so easily. I swung a towel around under the seats hoping it might sweep him off his tiny feet (one last attempt at chivalry), but found no purchase. Plan C was to reset his (now baitless) trap and hope he’d fall for the same sting operation twice, stupid mice. Except this guy had already outsmarted me. Time to go to work.
I agitatedly bounced around my cubicle like a caged mouse, pondering whom I could ask for help, and wondering what Big Brother I.T. would think about an internet search of how to de-mouse your car (I’m sure they’ve found many of my searches more suspicious, though less strange). After a busy morning, I ran out to my car at lunch, where the abandoned cell sat still empty. No Stockholm Syndrome for this former captive. Five quarters later at the gas station, and my floor mats were much cleaner, but I never heard the loud THWUNK that would tell me mini-rat genius was no more in my midst. On the way back to the office, I regularly tapped my feet to warn him to stay clear of me. Several long hours later, I tucked my pant legs into my socks and drove home, again toe-tapping to ward off an attack from the furry adversary.
I know a lot of dog people, but few cat lovers. There was a former co-worker who is on her way to becoming a crazy cat lady, but I lost track of her when she left the company. I don’t know any snake people, which is surprising, as devilish as I am. Regardless, how do you justify borrowing someone’s pet? Would adding more animals solve the problem? Or would my (relatively) new car smell turn to an animolfactory? Or would I find frozen fauna the next day, forcing me to try to sneakily replace like a kid’s goldfish, or like Ben Stiller did in “Meet the Parents”?
Okay, scratch that. Plan E – Freeze the Fucker. Leave the windows open overnight, and Mr. Jingles can either suffer hypothermia or hop out and scurry back inside my warm abode, which is, after all, where we started twelve hours earlier. Of course, as with most of my misguided plans, God was against me. The January temps were unseasonably not-freezing (global warming is such an inconvenient truth when you’re trying to make a mousicle). And it was supposed to rain. Oh well, what the hell. What’d I have to lose?
That evening I went for a run, hoping to clear my mind of the incessant obsession with a mouse in my car. I feared he’d become my Tell-Tale Heart, with the pitter-patter of his little feet haunting my waking thoughts and sleepless dreams, which makes no sense, I know, but still I feared it. The result of that run? An assignment of ironic blame for the whole predicament. I believe, with 50% certainty (either it did or did not really happen this way), that the last song playing before this morning’s drama played out was none other than Modest Mouse’ “Dashboard.” Coincidence? Couldn’t be; the rollicking rock song by a band humbly honoring this same species clearly fired him up for his frog-leap to freedom (free to run around inside a Ford Edge, anyway). Damn you, Alt-Nation! If only I had listened to the hairband station on the way to work, Faster Pussycat might have scared Jingles into submission and let me dump him out.
In bed that night (how could I sleep?), I penned an unbelievably stupid story about what’s worse than a mouse in your house, and which you are currently reading. Sai saw me scribing away, and assumed that I had something deep to say, perhaps pondering pensively about my imminent 40th Birthday (the next day), or giving ink to thoughts of first fatherhood (still several months away). When she read a few words and realized that I was writing instead about a mouse, she was bitterly disappointed at the dimwit she had wed, two days shy of five years prior. That’s right, for her five year anniversary, I gifted my pregnant wife with the knowledge that she’d 1) married an idiot (it really shouldn’t have taken her that long to figure that out); 2) agreed to spend the rest of her life with someone so incompetent that they couldn’t even empty a mousetrap without first losing the mouse (again, an idiot); 3) become the gestation station for the progeny of a person who found a mouse-capade literally more inspiring than a landmark life milestone (this is 40), or fatherhood; and 4) planned to take a long road trip in the mickey mouse-mobile in two days’ time to celebrate both our birthdays (hers is two days after mine), our anniversary, and a babymoon. Happy birthday / anniversary / babymoon, my coming-soon baby’s mommy dearest! Please don’t forget to tap your toes regularly.
Day 2 of this stupid drama started out so much better than my lousy, mousy Monday. No rodents in the kitchen! Happy birthday to me, indeed. But why are my car seats so wet? I’m pretty sure it was just rainwater. Otherwise, Mr. Jingles is seriously over-hydrated and probably suffering from hyponatremia instead of the hypothermia I had planned for him (sorry Buddha). But was he still in the car? You tell me. He didn’t leave a note or anything.
Along the way back to the office, mighty mouse colluded with the primitive radio gods to torment me, first by playing “Missed the Boat” by none other than Modest Mouse (I’d complain about the station playing the same artists too frequently, but I like those guys in normal circumstances) – “Our ideas held no water but we used them like a dam…” clearly making fun of me for failing to freeze / drown the passenger while soaking my seats the night before, admittedly a bad idea. Shortly thereafter, the artist Bastille (named after the former French prison) sang “Send Them Off”, with the verse “Set me free, from my jealousy, won’t you exorcise my mind, won’t you exorcise my mind… I want to be free as I’ll ever be…” clearly indicating that the four-legged fiend was calling in requests and/or I’m losing the last vestiges of sanity I thought I still had.
Plan F (or something, I’m losing track), I decided to drop my car for an early oil change, figuring when the mechanics got under the hood or left the car unattended, Mouselini might find his moment to reign terror on them instead. At a minimum, I hoped the trusty mechanic might warn me of signs of tiny teeth chewing through the brake cables. Admittedly, by this point, I was out of bad ideas and desperate.
When I called at midday, they said my car was ready to be picked up at any time. But did you see the mouse? I failed to ask. I expect to hear more teasing tunes such as The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go” or FYC’s “She Drives Me Crazy” on the classic alternative or 80s station as signs of his (or her) continued hidden presence. Until I hear Scandal’s “Goodbye to You” or see / smell a little corpse, I won’t believe it’s over. Until then, as in BNL’s second studio album (according to Wikipedia), Maybe You Should Drive.
The Mouse in the Car
Out of the trap and into my lap,
Instead of the street, it ran under my seat;
No matter what I did, there it hid,
And so like a jerk, I gave up and went to work.
A midday vacuum suck couldn’t seem to catch the fuck.
I had to laugh at my foolish gaffe,
While starting my plotting to freeze out his squatting.
But the temps wouldn’t go even close to zero;
Even so, I left open my window
Just in case Mousie’d go someplace.
The next morning came after a night of rain,
And did I get rid of the unwelcome pet?
Not yet? Or just a seat wet?
I wonder when or if I’ll see it again,
And if so, will I speak something manly or a girly “Eek!”?
For no matter how macho you think you are, only a freak is comfortable with a mouse in his car.
Post Script – Nearly three months after the above tale, after silent treatment from my furry fiend (or friend? a complicated relationship for sure), I took it upon myself (with the assistance of a charging Suburban) to total the rolling abode of a quiet mouse. When the car was cleared of its contents, there were still no signs of the little guy, until I was one day served with papers from a well-dressed legal rat informing me that I was being sued for personal injuries to my hidden passenger. The little fucker wanted to take my house! So I left the door open for a hobbled mouse to gingerly hop back in. If I catch him in a trap again, I should recognize him this time (how many mice wear neck braces?), and will just open the trapdoor inside rather than trying to take him away. Lesson learned.
Traipse Reports - Trips and Races 