The "Mouse" Trap

As the nights cool, a small creature seeks warmth and shelter within my four walls.  I am uncertain of my new guest’s arrival time as he surprises me, making his presence known by scurrying across my kitchen floor in broad daylight.  I immediately react ascending the top of a nearby chair; my high pitched squeal involuntarily piercing an otherwise quiet afternoon.    

I am now safely perched above, surveying his every movement as he runs underneath the couch in the next room.  Slowly, I descend from safety. 

I am living the Survivor series’ motto of “Outlast, Outwit, Outplay” as I transform into a vigilante grabbing a broom; watching for him to reappear.

Initially, I revert to my natural pacifist tendencies.  I have no intention of harming an innocent mouse.  I just want to scare the living daylights out of him by redirecting him with my broom to his natural habitat, outside of my home.  I must admit that this is not one of my more enlightened moments in life.  I am a far cry from the memorable scene in the film Seven Years In Tibet when construction workers, digging at a work site, refuse to harm the earthworms, moving each worm by hand to safely relocate all of them; one of the construction workers summarizing their reasoning by saying “in a past life, this worm could have been your mother.”     

The mouse adequately conceals his whereabouts as night falls making me fear sleep with this creature running about my house.

I am not ready to accept the mouse as my mother; neither in a past life nor this present life. 

The mouse must go here and now.

 I try to think of ways to outsmart the mouse.  The gods of wisdom forsake me as I abandon my pacifist intent and revert to the only resource I have immediately available:  

I am not proud as I  use peanut butter to bait an old-fashioned snap ‘em and whap ‘em on the head or tail, type of mousetrap. 

     By the next morning, I have forgotten about my new resident.  A good friend arrives and we begin the process to make home-made pumpkin butter and preserve it by pressure canning several jars.  I realize that I have forgotten some of the supplies & run down to my basement to retrieve them.

In a ~ SNAP ~   my high pitched squeal returns as the mousetrap bears down on my toes & I react, kicking the empty trap into the air, sending it flying across the room. 

As I clean gooey peanut butter from my stinging toes, I reconsider pacifism & my now embittered state of Karma.   

“Outlasted, Outwitted, Outplayed.”  Karma on his side, the mouse won.