Vicious beasts like this should not be frightening the cat and disrupting our family life. They should be outside fighting bears or something. (Image: USFWS)
As everyone sooner or later learns, the key to removing a mouse from your house is having enough kitchenware on hand. What we needed was a lip-less cookie sheet and a pitcher with a snug lid.
Having assembled the proper tools, it was time for man and wife to argue about how to proceed while children threatened the success of every step with meddling curiosity.
I slid the cover enclosing the mouse onto the cookie sheet. Now the rodent dungeon was mobile. My wife was in favor of just throwing the prisoner outside and being done with it, but I was not taking such chances with a trespasser who already knew his way in. We were going to put some distance between him and us.
Since nobody volunteered to ride in the car with Mad Mouse Beyond Thunderdome on their lap, I had to make the prisoner more secure. I made my wife come outside with me to transact the transfer.
If you and your spouse ever need to partner in moving a mouse from under a dish cover on a cookie sheet into a juice pitcher, be prepared for the ultimate test of your marriage. It should be one of the challenges on The Amazing Race, because it’s that full of drama.
A trapped mouse is a ferocious animal who will use any available part of your body to facilitate his escape, sending you into paroxysms of terror. Should this psychologically scarring event come to pass, it will be your spouse’s fault. This is a given. Your relationship may never be the same.
Welcome to Thunderdome: One mouse enters; two humans bicker.*
My wife chose to be the slider, leaving me the catching duties. She was skeptical of the plan from the first, predicting that the mouse would avoid the pitcher as the cover slid clear of the cookie sheet.
“If you do it quickly, he’ll have no place else to go,” I reassured her.
She was not reassured. “He’ll climb around the edge,” she insisted as she began her methodical sliding of the cover.
“Not if you do it quickly,” I repeated, attempting to prod her to swifter movement.
She shot back something about losing track of the mouse if she went too fast.
She was giving him too much time to think. “If you do it quickly!” I demanded.
A spouse who doubts your plan is unlikely to execute it quickly. She continued sliding the cover at her deliberate pace – to better identify the exact moment of failure.
“If you do it quickly!” No doubt, the vein was bulging in my neck. Dangerous animals have that effect upon me.
She gave me the famous “Say that one more time!” look.
The mouse, disoriented by my frantic bellowing, allowed himself to drop into the pitcher. I covered it with a sigh of relief.
My wife was back inside the house, having closed the door on both pests left outside.
I drove the mouse to a spot that looked ripe for colonization and set him free.
Then I went home to tell the cat he could come out of hiding and practice talking nice to my wife.
Snoozing on the Sofa 
Nice work. You might consider a second job: friendly mouse removal with baking tools.
With a third child coming any day, it’s more like “Anything for a buck.”
I’m glad you made it through without needing a rabies shot or a lawyer.
Knock on wood.
“Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a patch to your door”….But, in this case probably not.
My mouse trap makes cookies as well. Who else can say that?
I hope you had your iPod on playing triumphant music while you took the little guy out to colonize. Maybe the Jurassic Park theme? Way to go sir.
I felt only mildly triumphant at best, and I didn’t want to engender him with a false sense of hope as he embarked on the founding of his own private Roanoke Colony.
True that.
Imagine the stories the mouse will tell its children someday.
As the father of a new country, they will surely write history books about him.
Having flashbacks to years ago when, in the wee hours, I raced around my parents’ basement trying to capture an errant vole. EW! You should write a manual. Oh wait, you just kind of did. 🙂
Fortunately for me, my mouse had a limp.
This is hilarious! Once a bat got into our house (still trying to figure out how). My “badass” stepson, was out the front door and running through the front yard before I finished saying ” awwwww wookit da cute wittle bat in our dining room!!!!” Hubby and I caught it in a shoe box and set it free outside. Junior saw us coming outside and ran around to the back door. I was so excited to Facebook that……on HIS page so all his buddies could see it LOL
At least you no longer have to wonder which side of the fight or flight reaction scale you stepson resides on. It’s good to know what you can expect in future emergencies.
Practising talking nice to the wife…ummm. I’m sure that has to be some more rodents around begging to be caught and freed. That would be easier.
An opinion of being nice normally doesn’t reside in the one who is speaking, but more with the one who is listening. (Don’t tell the wife I said so.)
Please replace the word “that” with there in sentence 2. The comment might make a little bit more sense then… Damn sausages…
I read it as “there” the first time. Guess it was a context read. So your fat fingers didn’t cost you any meaning with me.
Good. And I didn’t refer to my fat finger, I beg your pardon, I was barbeque-ing sausages whilst typing..
Attempting multi-tasking, obviously not effectively.
Don’t worry, she is more than willing to instruct me in the practice of talking nice to her.
They do it quietly, don’t they? Video without audio.
“A spouse who doubts your plan is unlikely to execute it quickly.”
That could be a saying people hang on their walls someday.
Great read, both part I and II. Thanks for the laughs!
Spouses tend to have minds of their own. Many people forget this, but it usually holds true.
That too, would make for a perfect quote on a wall;)