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| Maybe Moe just wanted to say hi. (Photo: Ludovic Bertron) |
He sat there on my friend Kathy's kitchen throw rug, nose twitching, surveying the area to figure out his next heist while Kathy and I sat in the living room. I could see clearly into the kitchen from my vantage point. Kathy could not.
"Did you know you have a mouse in the house?"
"Yes, but I haven't seen him," she said.
"He's sitting right there on your throw rug in the kitchen."
"Are you serious?"
We got up and the mouse scurried across the kitchen floor and up the baseboard leading to the cupboards on ground level. Apparently the baseboard isn't completely enclosed, giving our new friend access to everything inside the cupboards.
"He's been in everything," Kathy said. "He even chewed the wrappers off the cough drops in the top drawer."
The mouse's little tail hung out of the baseboard. I couldn't help but think about the mouse story Rush Limbaugh tells about the time he captured a mouse in a trash can, and not knowing what to do with it, he reached for cooking spray, thinking he could kill the mouse with it. The mouse loved the buttery spray so much he rolled around in it. So, rather than killing the mouse, Rush made the mouse feel like he was in mouse heaven – a place where buttery spray falls from the sky.
I felt about as helpless as Rush did.
"What do you want me to do?" I said.
We decided to grab a bowl to see if I could capture him in it. How hard could it be? When Kathy shut the cupboard door I took the bowl from, the mouse shot out of the other cupboard, crashed into the nearby wall and dashed into the living room.
Kathy screamed and danced a little jig. I laughed.
The mouse, who has since been named Moe, got away. I looked under and behind furniture in the living room, but Moe was long gone. So, I still haven't caught a mouse.
Kathy is blogging about the incident over on her Caring Bridge journal (check out the entries for December 3, 4 and 6). Since I left, Moe reappeared and Kathy found a way to place a large bowl over him. She left him there for two days before her son-in-law finally came over and got rid of Moe, who was dead.
Kathy lost her husband just before Thanksgiving 2009. She has also been fighting cancer. On her Caring Bridge journal she said someone asked her if all the excitement caused by Moe lessened her physical pain. She said she wasn't sure, but the diversion did take her mind off the cancer.
If that's true, then Moe had a purpose. And I'm glad he found it.
