Now, don't think that I turned to broom whacking right away, but when I saw that baby mouse zip around like he owned the place it really. freaked. me. out.
Something had to be done.
Probably when you hear or read "baby mouse" you think of a cute cuddly creature capable of no wrong. Not me. I think of breeding and infestation and extermination. You see, we've been having a sort of a mouse problem here in our house lately. Let's just say every night after we put the kids to bed it's not uncommon to see a couple of mice zip by in the kitchen. It's okay, you don't have to come visit.
Back to the baby mouse. Like I said, I didn't want to whack it right away, mostly because I was afraid of the blood and guts thing, and because the only whacker I had in the vicinity was a short 2x4 and frankly, the small surface area was too risky to try. So I tried the most humane thing I could think of and loaded a mouse trap with parmesan and placed it in the corner. And waited.
Sure enough! it smelled the cheese and came scurrying straight to the trap. ---
You know how in scary movies you see the unaware girl walk closer and closer to the bad guy and you know what's going to happen, but you can't help but watch anyway? Well, that's how it was watching this little mouse head right to it's death.
Except, (to my horror) I watched that little varmint crawl right on top of the trap, eat all of the cheese, (I could've sworn it nodded a thank you) and then crawl right off. It was so light that it didn't even trigger the dang trap.
Darn. It was up to me, now. Remember, it was not just one mouse I was killing, it was all the future babies, as well. I know, that sounds so much better.
So I gathered my courage, ran upstairs, grabbed the kitchen broom, took a deep breath, (my heart was pounding like crazy) and whacked it until it was only twitching. Okay, you probably didn't need that last part, but you only have to read it. I had to witness it.
In conclusion, am I a hero? Probably. Can I sleep at night knowing what I've done? Not really, only because I'm afraid that a mouse will run into my bedroom. But the most important thing is knowing that after having the courage to kill a baby mouse, I can do anything.
Well, almost.
