The problem may be that I think I am smarter than I actually am.
The hubris is rooted in my ability to read, walk and chew gum at the same time, and getting at least one answer correct when watching Jeopardy. (Never underestimate how pleased with oneself one becomes when an educated guess on your part elicits oohs and ahhs from the simpletons around you who can’t even phrase their answer in the form of a question.)
And yet, despite all these testaments to my intellectual prowess, there I was in the doorway to my dark kitchen perched on my toes at 2 a.m., frozen but poised to … pounce? Strike? Who knows? All I can tell you is that I remember clearly what I was thinking:
“If I were a mouse, where would I be?”
This furry four-legged curse has taunted me for months. It waits until I have crossed over into my most relaxed state of slumber before it scurries out of its hiding place and begins rustling in … a garbage bag? A baguette sleeve? My cupboard? I don’t know. Time and again the rodent eludes me as I leap out of bed and rush to where I think the late night noise comes from.
Despite finding evidence of its existence — droppings, chewed on loaves of bread, missing cheese bait — I have yet to catch a glimpse of the beast.
The little mus muculus mocks me.
Thanks to author Beverly Cleary and her Ralph the Mouse children’s book series, the idea of killing a mouse (whose only real desire may be — like a lot of humans — to live a fulfilled adventurous life) is unappealing to me. So, to date, lethal traps and poison are out of the question.
The humane traps seemed a palatable option but somehow the mouse (the mice?!) eludes capture.
With great expectation I have filled them with bread, cheese, candy and peanut butter and with absolute regularity the traps remain empty. Somehow the mouse makes off with what, by now, it must assume is an offering to its godlike status. It has even started burrowing into my counter top philodendron because it obviously takes that for its own Garden of Eden, courtesy me.
The idea of bringing in a cat to patrol was briefly mulled over. But in addition to the expense, memories of a previous mouser dissuade me from going that route (the great calico hunter liked leaving its kills — birds, gophers and lizards — on my pillow or in the middle of my living room floor).
And so, for the time being, I’m left standing in the middle of my kitchen at 2 in the morning trying to think like a mouse.
Some people who know me think it’s funny that a rat has been outsmarted by a house mouse. But this is far from over. Eventually one of us will be leaving.
And I’m almost 100 percent certain it won’t be me.
