Of Mouse and Man

It’s me versus a little mouse, and I’m kind of rooting for the mouse.
He scurried across the floor the other day, from the living room closet to the kitchen tile to that little section of the apartment that’s immune to my X-ray vision, where the little rascal made his escape. I didn’t see him, but my common-law fiancée shrieked as if our puppy’s head had done a 360 because the devil was inside her.
Shudder.
Now, I could probably co-exist with little Mickey, so long as I didn’t find tiny paw prints in my Count Chocula. But the ol’ ball and chain apparently knows more about zoology than I do, and I’d forgotten they’d perpetuated AIDS and the Black Death and handlebar mustaches all those years ago.
So I had to get some traps from the apartment handyman, a mustachioed man named Schneider.
I was hoping Schneider would give me the standard mousetrap like in the cartoons, the ones that do the job with a quick snap, the ones Disney characters sung about on their ill-advised disco record (“Mousetrap! Will snap! And grab him by the tail…”). Instead, he gave me a couple of glue boards that smell like mouse perfume that I can put near all the mouse holes in the Love Lair.
So now I’ve got to wait for the little guy to cruise out of his hole, like all of us just trying to grab that chedda, and stumble onto my Rectangle of Death, where I presume he will die a slow death by lack of lactose, wishing he’d just ordered a pizza or something.
I don’t really want that, and not just because it’ll be icky to throw the little dead guy away. If not for the disturbingly hairless pink tail, that little Jerry could pass for my adorable if useless pet hamster.
So maybe he can get away. Maybe he can drop an anvil on me, or make me run off a cliff and I won’t notice until I look down and then I’ll fall to my death, or he’ll paint a fake mouse hole in the wall for me to bump my head on.
I just hope I get there before his eyes are fully X-ed, so I don’t have to see the little guy struggling to get free from his little tar pit. That would be traumatic for me, and worse for him.
You know what?
I’m picking up those glue boards.
Oh, Mickey, what a pity, you don’t understand, you take columnist Jacob Bennett by the heart when you take him by the hand. Oh, Mickey, you’re so pretty, can’t you understand, it’s guys like you, Mickey, ooh what you do, Mickey, do Mickey, e-mail him at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com, don’t break his heart, Mickey.