Mousie in the Housie

I'd just gotten home from work and was following Ray (with a big pig-ear in his mouth) around the coffee table, through the hallway, into the kitchen, and around again. It's his way of celebrating being home after his long, hard day of playing with a bunch of dogs at 'school'.

I saw a small, grey movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked in the direction of the movement, a big question mark hanging in the air over my head. There was nothing there. I walked towards the movement and saw nothing. I looked in the most likely place that the movement would be hiding if it was a chipmunk and saw an eensy little mousie cowering behind the large piece of furniture upon which rests our TV. I descriptively call it the "big thing with the TV on it."

When the mousie saw me, it very intelligently turned and ran in the opposite direction from the giant that was eyeing it. I tried to head it off at the pass to keep it behind the big thing with the TV on it, but the mousie, not so smartly, kept coming at me. Stereotypically, I screamed like a girl and jumped out of its way.

Ray, who had been closely following me, immediately had my back. His ears were deployed in ultra Dumbo mode and his head was tilted as he somewhat nervously stuck close to my side to offer what protection he could. He knew something was up but he was darned if he knew what it was.

Mousie ran out from behind the big thing with the TV on it and across the room to hide behind the bookcase. I helplessly followed it and Ray just as helplessly followed me. I didn't have any mouse-wrangling equipment with me and I didn't want to let the furry little thing out of my sight to go get some.

Then Mouse, sticking close to the wall, did a tour of the entire room. Following at a safe distance, Ray and I did too. We ended up back at the big thing with the TV on it. Mouse paused. Ray and I paused.

I was pondering my options when Mouse took off again. This time it turned right where before it had turned left (obviously there was no way out to the left). It headed into the coat closet, ran to the back wall, then realizing its error, turned and raced back toward me and freedom. I eeeked but was determined to keep Mouse in a nice confined space so didn't budge (much).

Mouse, after exploring its limited options, jammed itself into a tiny gap in the corner of the closet, only its tail visible to tell me that it hadn't disappeared inside the wall.

I got down on my hands and knees. Ray got up in my face, snuffling to make sure I was still OK. I donned a pair of winter gloves that were handily by and crawled back into the closet. Ray put his nose to the floor in an attempt to figure out what the heck I was trying to track. I tried futilely to get ahold of the mousie tail to extract Mouse from its hidey hole but thick winter gloves do not lend themselves well to tiny tail grabbing.

I backed out of the closet, stood, and raced up the stairs with Ray sticking to my heels like toilet paper. I retrieved my map tube and headed back down the stairs at a high rate of speed still followed by my trusty protector. I grabbed the flashlight and yardstick and, now appropriately armed, went back to the closet.

I realized pretty quickly that my old standbys were not much use in this particular mouse situation. I couldn't scrape the mousie out of the crack into which it was wedged and couldn't convince it that the tube was the place to be when there was a giant dog and a giant at the other end of it. So I positioned the tube toward Mouse, closed the closet door, taped all along the bottom gap with painters tape so that Mouse couldn't escape, clipped a leash on Ray and went for a nice long walk.

By the time Gregg got home from work, Mouse had taken up residence in the middle of the map tube and was airlifted to more appropriate surroundings outside.