The thing about mouse hunting is this: no matter how many points the mouse gets in the game, as soon as the people get a point, the mouse loses.

After hearing a program where a guy said that hunting mice is the easiest thing in the world, I was encouraged to try again to catch our kitchen mouse. I decided to use pepperoni as the bait this time. I carefully adjusted the trap and tested it to make sure it would work properly. It snapped perfectly and beheaded the poor drinking straw that I used as the pretend mouse. So I stuck a nice piece of pepperoni in the little holder, set the trap, and ever-so-carefully slid it under the sink. The next morning I checked the trap, and there it was, still set, but minus the pepperoni. The mouse had stripped it clean and left it set, too! Argh! So I tried again, this time smooshing the pepperoni firmly into the holder, so that the mouse couldn’t lift it out quite so easily next time. But the mouse ignored my trap, and instead Isaac knocked into it twice and finally I lost hope in my mouse-trapping abilities yet again. The next night I decided to try one more time, since it doesn’t hurt anything other than my pride to try again. The next morning, I was totally amazed to see that the mouse was dead in the trap. It had worked! I pulled it out from under the sink and admired my catch. The mouse’s fur was beautiful. It’s little ears were so thin, and it’s feet were so tiny! I regretted having to kill the mouse (a boy mouse, I could see), but there didn’t seem to be any other way to get him out of my kitchen.

Now, the kitchen feels strangely silent. No more chance of a mouse scurrying along the baseboard. No more wondering where all those little feet have scampered around my dishes. And now I finally get one point in the mouse versus human game.