faster, pussycat -- kill, kill

my apologies to russ myers on this title but i hope you find it a suitable one as you keep reading.

and no, this is not a tale about 3 strippers gone wild in the desert. this is a tail (pun intended) of another sort. the scritch, you see, is back.

the last few weeks, in the rest of my scuttle to wrap up a project at work and end a school semester, i had the lovely displeasure of waking up to poop. lots of little pellet poops, of the mousiest kind. argggh.

i do what any animal rights person in her right mind would do... i brought out the "mouse house" and humane traps to set around the kitchen where our newest boarder had taken to dining each evening.

"g'day, sir. may i seat you in the smoking or nonsmoking section?" i inquire as host.

"any seat by the fruitbowl would be suitable, thank you, miss. those apples you served last night, they're marvelous, simply marvelous."

"wonderful to hear, sir. our chef picked those apples especially to bake a pie but by you helping yourself to them, well, you really saved a lot of innocent folks from having to eat that apple pie. my compliments to you."

but if the mouse was as grateful and appreciative as that i wouldn't be asking him to leave, then, now would i? my goddess, he ate my cooking -- he should be worshipped! with nearly 200 lbs of wild monkeys dogs bumbling about the house, one would think something weighing only a few ounces would think twice about moving in. rightfully so, any person stupid enough to break into my house would be greeted by the drooling smile of my rottweiler -- why shouldn't a mouse feel the same the threat of impending doom?

because dogs are not cats. amazingly, this is a new discovery for me, too. the extreme difference in size sadly wasn't an earlier clue...

so when a mouse has settled in a "chez mc-clot-sky", the dogs i discovered will do no good as a deterrent. but a "mouse house" will. fittingly enough, the mouse also chose to move in when mam is away. for business -- that is -- not play, even if he is in vegas.

bleery-eyed that morning, i stumbled into the kitchen at 6:00 am looking to do just 3 simple things: make coffee, feed those 200 lbs of puppies, and pack my work bag for the day. that's it. so when i see the door on the "mouse house" closed with a no vacancy sign lit, well, i knew it was a monday. and i hate mondays.

the only thing that tops my hatred of mondays is my mother's hatred of mice. and guess who was coming over to feed those 200 lbs of puppies dinner while i was in class that evening? yup, the mouse-hater, my mother ... the chuckinator.

i struggled with full disclosure -- to mouse or not to mouse, that is the question. 'tis better to suffer the slings of punches as my chuckie fights her way out of the little tiny mouse's range of sight, or to lie, to lie perchance to deny, deny, deny the little mouse ever lived in the "mouse house" on the counter near the stove? aye, there's the rub.

i disclosed in true political fashion: i believed, there may or may not be a mouse in the house on the counter. potential for but no promise there was one, past performance is no guarantee, that sort of thing. i left this long-winded message on her voicemail at work. and then heard nothing.

the chuckinator had agreed to feed the puppies for me since mam was away for business and i had class. she had not agreed to come to my house when there was a possibility of a 3 ounce mouse trapped in my kitchen. her silence, i assumed, meant my puppies bladders would be just shy of erupting by the time i got home. or i'd be shampooing the carpets again.

what i didn't know is she called the next best thing to me -- my brother. in tears. i believe the conversation went something like:

my brother: "hello, company abc. oh, hey there chuckie. what's up w---"
chuckinator butts in before he can finish: "EEEKKWHATISYOURSISTERTRYINGTODOTOME? [gasp for air] SHECALLEDMEANDTOLDMESHEHASAMOUSEINHERHOUSE [gasp.] ANDSHEKNOWSIHATEMICE. [gasp for air one more time.] WAAAHHHH! [gasp.] WHATAMIGOINGTODO?IHATETHEMIHATETHEM. [another deep breath in. now release.] I'LLHAVEAHEARTACHEIFISEEIT,YOUHAVETOHELPMEPLEEEEAAASE!EEEK!" [the shrieking dies out to a sad, soft whimpering sound.]

needless to say, my brother wanted to bash my skull in for having to talk our mother down from crying in the middle of a workday for something i had caused. as if the mouse made reservations to stay at my place in advance.

she's a trooper though. she did arrive at my house, as she said she would but our normally, mild-manner mother turned a side i have never witnessed nor even would have thought she would have been capable of. there was bloodlust in heart when she walked through my door.

she wanted mickey dead in the worst way. when my brother arrived to escort mickey to his new home in the woods outback of chez mc-clot-sky, she shrieked in the background, "kill it, kill it". she stood fearlessly and chanted as he took the "mouse house" outdoors to release him and yelled through the doorway, "just kill it already for crissakes."

that is, until he unlocked the latch on the "mouse house" and tried to evict the tenant. only to have the tenant dart back towards the very door where she stood screaming for his head, that managed to shut her up real quickly.