Mouse Trap

I was just thinking about mice...lol :) I have no idea where my thoughts come from sometimes. But there it is....my topic for today - mice!

I suppose it may have started when I was scrapbooking photos of Erykah and Uncle Darren the other day. Erykah had gotten the mousetrap game for Christmas and Uncle Darren was helping her put together the teeny tiny never-ending plastic pieces.



My mind is brought back to my teenage years and my first mouse experience. My bedroom was in the basement of our house. As a teenager I wanted the privacy and the space this room provided. But with the good comes the bad. This room was also the coldest, attracted the most spiders, and even made a good home for a mouse on at least one occasion.

I had awakened in the middle of the night, thought I felt something. So I turned on my lamp. There, sitting amongst my stuffed toys was a teeny little mouse. I looked at him, he seemed to be hiding. It was as though he was thinking, "Ok, if it just sit very still then she'll just think I'm one of the toys!" No such luck for the rodent. I was petrified and started screaming for my dad to come downstairs right away, "There's a mouse! A MOUSE!". Dad was somewhat accustomed to these late night calls but they were normally to exterminate a spider.

So my father armed himself with the most readily available weapon in the house (a shoe) and chased the little mouse and hit him over the head. Dead! Well, at least severely brain-damaged. I was so upset! I didn't want the poor little mouse to DIE - he was just looking for a nice warm and cozy home. My father picked him up and put him outside and tried to reassure me that he was probably "just knocked out".

Funny, isn't it? How such a tiny little creature could have such an impact on me that I still think about it today. I can still see him hiding there in the toys, determined not to make a move. I wonder what if he/she had a family? What if I hadn't called my dad but instead had tried to scoop him up into a jar and put him outside to be free? I feel terrible.

Please feel free to share your similar stories. I certainly cannot be the only one with such ridiculously over-analyzed experiences with rodents.

(the more I write, the more I realize what a nerd I really am...)