Part III of V... Mouse 2, Mom 0

These 5 installments come from e-mail I sent family and friend in October of 2003. They are written in present tense and other than names, I have altered nothing. The 2nd installment is HERE, and the first is HERE. To recap, I discovered I had a rodent living in my dash, my husband was out of town, in an irrational frenzy I tried to sell my mini-van before he got home, and I've now set a big ass rat trap with peanut butter and am awaiting the demise of said rodent. This is my ongoing saga... woman vs. rodent-Bou

Last night he got yet another free meal. My husband checked the trap this morning and it was not only NOT tripped, but he had gotten one of the sunflower seeds. I fed him again, like a pet. I could not figure out for the life of me what I was doing wrong. I have to lay blame on two things: the directions for the trap and my memory. I lay blame for the directions because they DO NOT show you how a trap gets set. There are no after pictures. They don’t show you what it looks like baited. If that were not bad enough, they don’t give directions either. This is a sample: Pull lever back. Bait trap. Set trap. That’s it. Hulloooo???? So I did all this, but I put the bait on the board. I worked at in the high tech world of aerospace too long. For some reason I thought this trap must be pressure sensitive or something. I figured the mouse just had to lay a foot on it and BLAMMO, he was dead. Nope. There is this little trigger mechanism that you have to put the food on and trust me, it doesn’t look like anything you put foot on. It’s this bent up piece of metal with a hole in it. Don’t ask what the hole is for. I have no clue. The first time I set it out, I thought that’s where the rod went when you set it. Wrong. Since it isn’t a high tech pressure sensitive piece of equipment, my new pet got to eat to his heart’s content and not worry about being decapitated or whatever it does. I guess it isn’t a guillotine, but I figure it’s got to be ugly. Anyway, I blame my memory because the only thing I can remember from setting rat traps is what I saw from Tom and Jerry cartoons 25 years ago. Maybe that’s why Jerry always got away. I could swear they placed the bait on the wood part of the trap… but I think perhaps my memory has failed me and I am wrong. Jerry was just smart.

Today I have two traps. Tonight is the night. Tonight he dies. On the driver’s side I have his choice of a trap with cheese and on the passenger side he gets last night’s entrée of peanut butter and sunflower seed. It is all set properly now and the bait is in the proper place. I don’t see how he can get out of it this time. I think it’s a done deal. I feel so certain, that I got a sitter for tomorrow so I can drive my van to Toyota so they can fix the wiring mess. I’m kind of afraid to see what all has been chewed on. I am pretty sure my stereo and speaker wires got munched.

On a lighter note, my dear friend E. is married to a retired Army General. He rode with Patton while liberating a concentration camp in Germany during WWII and was a General during ‘Nam. The man has seen everything. So she sends me an e-mail informing me that next time I need anything trapped to call her and she’ll send him over. It seems he’s quite the expert on trapping things. I don’t know. Calling in the General, although tempting, makes me feel like I lost. I just can’t literally call in the troops for a mouse. I’m going to win this, without the cavalry. –D.