Ralph Dies a Tragic Death

So maintenance did just bring us mousetraps, but they were nice, hi-tech, “no touch, no see” mousetraps. They are these hollow black cylinders with a little hole on the bottom to fill with peanut butter and an opening on the side that snaps shut when the mouse enters. Something else happens on the inside to kill the mouse, but because the trap kindly hides it from your view you never have to know what befell the little creature. When I took the traps from the maintenance guy I felt both relieved (I wouldn’t have to see Ralph, ever), and, to my surprise, a little disappointed. I really didn’t mean to name the mouse. It just happened when I was searching for a title for the blog and kept thinking about Ralph S. and his motorcycle. But once I wrote a page or two on the creature and gave him a name, he suddenly had personality. I felt kind of bad just killing him.

For the record, I no longer feel bad. We set out the traps on Wednesday night and nothing happened. The traps stayed out on Thursday night, and when I got home from the temple that night a little before eleven there were already mouse droppings on the table but no mouse in either of the traps. This bothered me. I wondered if we should relocate the traps, but I didn’t do anything. On Friday night I came home from a party earlier than my roommate but after dark. I flipped on the kitchen light, and maybe I heard some scrabbling but maybe my imagination has inserted that little detail into my memory. Just as I suspected there were droppings on the table again (but not many) and no mouse in the traps and I was beginning to feel a bit frustrated. I picked up one of the traps and set it firmly on the table because that’s where the mouse seemed to be spending all his time, and then I heard a noise and turned toward our shelves just in time to see a little gray figure jump frantically from one shelf to another.

I don’t ever scream. Not in the presence of big ugly spiders in the bathtub, not when I step on a sharp object, not when the dead woman walks past the bathroom in The Sixth Sense. But I do yelp, and I yelped then. Loudly. And I'm not sure what word to use to describe how I got out of the kitchen because I didn't quite run, or jump, or dash. Maybe I darted. Anyway, whatever I did it was fast. And I stood in my room for a moment with my heart pounding. Pounding from adrenaline, not fear. I was not afraid of the mouse. Really. I just really, really didn't want or expect to see him.

My roommate has dealt with mice before, when she lived in a little hole-in-the-wall basement apartment up by campus last year, and she now had very good reason not to trust the no-touch-no-see mousetraps. So she pulled out her own supply of standard wooden snapping traps, smeared a couple with peanut butter, and placed them strategically in our kitchen. When I saw that she had done this on Saturday morning I had mixed feelings. On the one hand I felt hopeful. She had successfully caught several mice with her standard traps—she told me about it when I informed her we had a mouse in our apartment—and perhaps this would finally do the trick. On the other hand, it meant that I was probably going to have to see a dead mouse. I am the first one up in the morning and the first one into the kitchen and this meant that if the trap worked I would either have to dispose of a mouse myself or sit and eat my oatmeal with a dead mouse staring at me from the corner. I didn’t like either of these options.

Good news. Our mouse (mice? I hope not) come out shortly after nightfall. On Saturday night I went to bed earlier than my roommate. When I woke up on Sunday morning and walked warily into the kitchen and warily eyed the corner, I saw that one of the traps was gone. I rejoiced, and later confirmed my conclusion with my roommate. The trap had caught a mouse the night before. She was up late enough to discover this and disposed of the mouse before going to bed. I never saw the creature, never touched the creature, never had to eat my oatmeal with a dead mouse staring down my conscience. And never had to think about Ralph being dead except in the most abstract of senses.

So the mouse is gone. I just hope he was the only one.