Say hello to my little friend...

The night before last, Nicole and I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of small feet scurrying around the house.

"Did you hear that?"
"Yes."
"Is it in the house?"
"No way," I assured her, knowing damn well the rodent was probably in our room. "Sounds like its underneath the house."

Our house isn't on a foundation. Like just about every other house in town, it is propped up in the corners on a stack of 4x4 boards stacked log cabin style.

My empty promise was enough to get me a good night's sleep, but I would pay dearly for it later.

Yesterday evening I set the two mouse traps that the landlord had left in the house. I placed one in the furnace room. I wanted to put the other in the porch, but Nicole insisted on placing it in our bedroom. For some strange reason I didn't protest. I set the trap in one corner of the room.

We went to bed around eleven. The trap was sitting less than five feet from our slumbering heads. I was just at the point of dozing off when the crack of the trap woke us both. Nicole jumped about two feet straight up and then latched onto me, not entirely sure what the noise was at first.

"Relax, relax, it's just the mouse trap."

"What?! Brodie check it! Turn on the light!"

For someone who spent four years working as a biologist, Nicole is an absolute wimp when it comes to bugs or rodents. I grabbed our alarm clock off the bed and tried to aim the indiglo light in the corner. It was too dark.
So I got up, barefoot, and turned on the light.

The trap was empty. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light before I spotted him. He was cowering against the wall, next to Nicole's hair dryer and curling iron; a little ball of fluff looking up at me with the smallest set of puppy dog eyes.

"I see him! Don't worry, he's just little."

"What? Where is he? Kill him Brodie! Here."

From her perch on the bed she handed me one for her fuzzy green slippers. Both the slipper and my heart were too soft to kill the little thing in front of me.

I took the slipper and moved in closer. I could see that the trap had wounded our little friend. A small trickle of blood was running down one side of his face, as if he were crying tears of blood. I think my own heart started to bleed a little at this point. How in the hell was I going to bash this little thing to death?

"This will never work Nicole. I'm going to get a pot."

The little bugger decided to make his move. Before I could get to the kitchen, he ran along the wall, past our closed bedroom door, and into the closet. Nicole was flipping out. I went to grab a pot, and she ran for the safety of the living room.

Now, you know, and I know, that a mouse can't really hurt you. It can get into your food and shit on your silverware, but the mouse itself is harmless. That's why I went for a pot and not a frying pan. I would at least be able to trap him.

Our closet doesn't have a door. It's filled with packing tubs full of clothes which act as makeshift dressers. I started to pull these out, one by one, hoping that our little friend would be hiding behind one of them.

I found him at the very back behind a pair of my boots. He was running from one side to the other, peeking out each time as if I couldn't see him. If this were a sitcom, you would hear the "awwwww" from the studio audience right about now.

I pulled away one boot and then the other, ready to strike, when he took off again, this time for the door.

"He'll never fit under that," I thought to myself. But sure enough, he squeezed under the door.

"Here he comes!"

From the other side I could hear Nicole yelling. You have to remember that it was still as bright as anything in our living room. She saw him coming. When I came out, she was standing on top of the kitchen table.

"Under the couch! He went under the couch!"

I retrieved the mousetrap from the room and placed it in the middle of our living room floor. Then I somehow coaxed Nicole back to bed. This morning it was still empty. Part of me was glad he had escaped.

Nicole is now asking me if the Northern store sells rat poison. I'm not sure, but if it does I'll have to break the pellets into tiny pieces for our little friend and hope to God the poison kills him after he's outside the house. I couldn't stand to look at that thing after he's dead.