So, what about this mouse?

A couple of days ago, I hear this :scratch: :scratch: :scratch: in the kitchen garbage can. My oldest daughter asks me about it and I tell her that it is one of our mice friends in the garbage, and she looks big eyed and concerned about what we should do. So, I cleverly pick up the garbage can and take it out onto the back porch and set it down. I pull off the lid and carefully remove the half full liner to find the mouse in the bottom of the can, trapped and unable to jump high enough to escape the plastic walls of the can. I call my youngest daughter out, and both are leaning over looking down at this captive mouse and talking and laughing at it jump, jump, jumping and getting no where.

I am used to setting spring traps and let the trap do the dirty work of :gulp: killing the pesky little varmints, leaving the deformed little carcus for me to scrape off of the trap into the field behind our house. Then forget about it. Now I have this captive little woodland creature that could star in the next Cinderella movie. :sighs: What to do, what to do.

The mouse was a topic at dinner that night. What should we do with it? Kill it, release it, experiment on it? (Shrills "No Daddy!") Well, you get the idea, it is still in this can on the back porch and what typically is my problem has quickly become a we problem and are at a loss as to how to handle this diplomatically in doing the fairest thing for us and the mouse. :smiles:

Yesterday, when I picked up my eight year old from school, we talked about the mouse again. Can we feed the mouse? Should we stop and buy an tubular environment for it to live in? Should we just capture it and put it in a glass jar with a holes punched in the lid and keep it for a few days? What do we do when we get tired of it? I suddenly have a solution to offer. We shall extract the mouse from the bottom of the can (hence rescue it from it's prison) and wisk it off into a jar with breathable lid (holes punched in it). We keep him for a day or two, and then take him for a little car ride over to grandma's house on Saturday to show her (and get a laugh out of freaking her out with it). Once grandma has gotten over the fact that the grand children have a mouse for a pet, we carefully and quietly remove the lid, look around to make sure no one is watching, then tip the jar over and let the mouse out at grandmas. By the time I finish with the entire disposal scenario, she is cackling uncontrollably about it. It was the hardest that I think she has ever laughed at something.

I must say now, after two days, the mouse has been a real source of conversation, creativity and laughter at our home.