Sunday, November 01, 2015

 

Sunday Reflection: The Tostitos Terror


Very early on Saturday morning, at about 3 a.m., I heard a noise in my kitchen. It was a very specific noise, too: that of a person eating a bag of chips.

Rustle rustle rustle
{silence}
Rustle rustle rustle
{silence}
Rustle rustle rustle

The obvious image leapt to my mind: a man in my kitchen, casually eating chips before making his way out of the house (presumably with some stuff).

I listened some more, now wide awake. I could be in the kitchen in just a few seconds if I ran, and that is what I did-- stopping to flip on the lights. As I approached the room, I thought that I heard some skittering. Looking into the kitchen, there was no one; just an open bag of Tostidos leaning against the breadbox.  Whoever had been eating the chips was still in the house.

Quietly, I crept from room to room, flipping on lights and checking in corners. Nothing. Flummoxed, I flopped down on the couch and thought.

Only then did it occur to me to look inside the bag of chips. And there he was: a tiny brown mouse looking up at me as his paws furiously tried to run up the side of the bag.

I certainly did not want a mouse in my house, and he was already in a bag, so I simply took the bag and walked outside on the back patio. The bricks were cold under my bare feet; Minnesota is like that.  The ground was a little wet, and there was utter silence.

In my hand was a Tostitos bag with a live mouse inside. I didn't have a plan, though I ran through a few options. If I let the mouse go, I knew he would find his way back into the house. If I crushed him in the bag, it would be relatively easy; I wouldn't even see the blood or the broken body. Finally, I could just put him in the trash can in the sealed bag and assume he would die, super-villian style.

As I worked through these options, the mouse leapt from the bag to freedom-- a mad, furious leap from three feet up to the cold bricks-- and scrambled away beyond the barbecue grill and the chiminea.  Now I just had an empty bag. I stayed out there for a bit, thinking about the mouse. In his own way, he was a brave little guy. He had lived most of his life outside, eating nuts and seeds and hiding from cats and hawks.  It got cold, and he found a way in and then found a way to the top of the counter. He peered into a bag of chips and jumped in, with no plan on how to get out. And when he had a brief, stark chance for freedom, he leapt into the darkness and landed on his own four paws.

It could have been a man in the house, an insouciant thief.  I could have crushed the mouse, killed it instantly, or sealed the bag to be his prison until he died. In the end, I did not choose to let him go. He chose to go. But of the options, that was the best.



Comments:
Yay for the mouse!
 
Nice Ode to a Mouse. "The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." Well done. Yay for the mouse, indeed.

Funny. Just a few weeks ago I faced a similar encounter, coming upon what was clearly a rat in my kitchen in the early morning, necessarily ticking through very similar thoughts and options in a split second.

I went Aleksander Petrovsky (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0698655/) on the poor creature with a nearby frying pan. Of course, it was a rat (not a mouse), which engages slightly different protocols, but, nevertheless, it is a Hell of thing killing a sentient being (even a rat). "You take away everything he has and ever will have." It took another quick blow with the cookware and a final press to squeeze out the remaining life in him, the poor little "beastie" giving out one last eerily human moan of pain and defeat.

The incident still remains fresh (even after a few weeks). No regrets in the sense that the rat had to go; he had plenty of opportunities to leave. He was an interloper who was flaunting his disregard for our family space--and had been for some time. I did not enjoy killing that rat, and I would rather forget it. But still it remains. It is a Hell of a thing killing a rat.
 
I fully expect to find this story in your next book.
 
Rats ubiquitous and absolutely unwelcome in our deep south port city. In 30's pater, a crack shot with .22 shorts, picked them off at dusk from front stoop as they ran telephone wires from their incubator, an abandoned corner house. I know-shooting in city not good. But general consensus then was rats worse. City couldn't/wouldn't control, so job fell to vigilantes. Viva 2nd amendment.

Don't remember him missing much. No record of other casualties. Different times. But, rats still here-only smarter. Evolution. If anyone thought well of these pests, some nerdy college would have them for mascots. Give me an R, Give me an A, etc. ad nauseam.
 
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