Me vs. Mouse: Day 1

I was pretty wasted last night due to my extended hours trying to keep up with my writing goal.  So I am sure you can imagine my frustration to be awakened almost an hour and a half earlier than planned by the sound of a tiny little criminal lurking around in my room somewhat loudly.  I could basically tell which direction it was coming from so I tried to quietly sit up and stealthily detect his(her?) location.  I decided to close the storage container sitting closest to the estimated sound making area, thinking it highly possible that the little mess maker was wandering around inside it still.  Luckily for me, and I am sure much to the slobbish little rodent's chagrin, my hunch proved correct and I had finally had him in my Sterilite™ clutches!

The proper disposal of this generally annoying micro-fiend was now my unwitting pleasure.  I decided to let him stew in his shrewd little cell for a bit while I took a break to eat some breakfast and do the morning rounds online.  Probably not too unlike the punishment of a small child for his rebellious insolence at the site of vegetables... for which I am not very experienced, to be fair.  Anyway, I was not sure exactly what I was going to do so I needed a moment to brew up some ideas.

Bright idea #1 never actually surfaced, but semi-lit idea #1 got me out the door and to the car with the whole, big ol' box in hand and ready to head out to the wilderness for our amicable parting.

I started by circling around in the nearby neighborhoods scoping for shady, clandestine-seeming locales which encouraged the simple transaction of release that I had dreamed up in my mind.  It seemed all sorts of easy and uncomplicated.  I thought my trip would be brief and generally satisfactory.  The naivety of that thinking would soon be well fixed in my mind, however, as the disappointing tale of my idiocy unfolded before me.

Flashbacks of the grassy fields and tall coniferous forest nearby prompted me to head a little way off down the street in a nearly eastward direction.  My memory of said area was fairly spot on and soon I reached one of many excellent spots for my little rendezvous with destiny.  A mousely emancipation of sorts.

Things seemed simple enough.  I pulled the box out the passenger door, setting it on the ground next  to the car, and slightly obscured by a large tree immediately adjacent to the car.  I opened the top lid flaps and peered around into the box to see what our little mouse friend was up to, and if he was interested in vacating the premises.  With amazingly spry leaping capability he hopped right up to the top of the box. Almost as quickly he apparently decided that the car of his captor was a preferable alternative to the perfectly innocuous ball field/residential environs I had so lavishly appropriated for him, and he quickly vanished into one of the numerous mouse-sized cracks found in the car's interior.  The little fur-covered missile moved so quickly into obscurity that the gaping mouth I had intended to make was simply bypassed by the semi-furious fluster-face I was apparently storing up for just such an occasion.

Since I was driving my parents car this seemed like a tremendous nuisance to deal with if I was not free of this mini-plague shortly.  Leaving it in my car was just not an option.  I can only imagine what sorts of havoc would be wrought at the expense of either, or both, of my parents in whatever various ways a mouse can create disharmony.  I tried to coax it out with kind words, a little stiff banging on various areas of the dash board and inner walls of the car, and patience... to no avail.  I might have put 20 minutes or more into the case at hand but realized, as I had homework that needed doing with some personal urgency, that I would be better off making a later attempt when the time to do so was not as much an issue.  I decided to move on with life.

Enter concluding mouse scene of the day: returning home from school late at night.  It was obviously very dark inside as I was driving home and I suddenly felt the miniature villain climbing on my left pant leg up to my knee(luckily not inside the pants.)  He went back down after a few seconds and went in like manner up my right leg.  I was a bit alarmed, as one would expect, but kept my calm and pulled off the freeway to see if I might finally see this little cheeser on his way.  Another 20 or so minutes were wasted in a parking lot trying to coax him on to grayer pastures before getting back on my way home.

Coming down to the last mile or so before arriving back at home I decided to give it one more shot.  This time I decided to pull out all the stops and actually offer it my last duplex cookie as incentive.  I started by breaking it in half and laying one piece in between the partially opened passenger door and the main access crack I spotted him the most frequently.  After several minutes I broke that piece down further into more easily ingestible pieces and pushed them up to the very opening of the crack as if to offer my virgin cookie sacrifice.

Slowly a tiny, greedy little paw drew one of the pieces away into the darkness.  It was taking a while so I decided to play my current word-game fix on the iPod while I waited for the right opportunity to strike.  He took a while to claim the second offering and things were not particularly inspiring since I didn't see much more than a few mouse fingers throughout the process.

Then, as my head was buried in my game, a car pulled up along side mine to ask me what was going on.  It wasn't a cop, which took me a few seconds to actually notice, but a concerned local citizen who seemed a bit disturbed by my presence as he also noted in his questioning that I had "been there for quite a while."  I did not want to express my sentiments concerning the mousy invader and simply dodged the truth to avoid upsetting the status quo any further.  It seemed time to call it a night, I concluded at this point, and finally made my way back home to fight again another day.

My roommate handed me a mousetrap shortly after I sat down here tonight.  The events of day 2 should be well implied by the statement that patience will not be necessary, I am sure.  Or perhaps that is yet another dose of naivety speaking a bit too soon.