We live on a gradual sloping hillside that originally was farm field.. Your Mom and I were spending a quiet Tuesday evening at home watching a stupid movie called “The Box”. It is a sci-fi thriller. It wasn’t as thrilling as the little dark gray critter that scampered across our family room carpet. When you get older, you don’t always trust your eyesight but a darting animal is unmistakeable. It was from the rodent family, probably a mouse or mole.
The next morning I stopped at Fleet Farm to buy mouse traps. The traps are filled with glue interlaced with food. I help the process by putting peanut butter in the center of the trap. I put one trap in the game room on the floor near the refrigerator. The hunt had begun.
Being the patient hunter that I am, I waited until Thursday morning to check the trap. It was gone. An older citizen like myself can begin to doubt his actions. Did I pick up the trap and put it elsewhere. Did your Mom move the trap. Clearly, the trap was gone.
The floor in the gameroom is white linoleum with a heavy black pattern. Coincidently, the mouse trap was black. A black trap moved within the heavy black pattern could easily be missed. I looked and looked. Nothing. I moved boxes and clutter. Nothing. I checked the furnace room. Nothing. I shone a flashlight under the furnace and under the family room couch. Nothing! I got tired of looking..
It dawned on me to solve the puzzle by thinking like a mouse. If I were a mouse and I got stuck in a mouse trap, what would I do. I would try to get free of the sticky glue mess in the trap and I would try to crawl to someplace dark and “private”. The closest safe haven was the refrigerator. So I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall. I looked behind. Ho, ho, ho! There was my mouse trap with a cute grey adult mouse. He must have twisted to get out of the trap and it was stuck to his back. He crawled behind the refrigerator. He died with his feet aimed at the ceiling. I felt like playing taps. He was given a proper funeral and put to rest.
So the hillside mystery was solved. I found the missing glue trap and the mouse. As Grasshopper No.5 would declare, “the little f—er was dead”. I have more traps in case the mouse had a “friend”.
Never underestimate the cunning of an old man.
Love,
Dad