dogs

Bloggers speak of writer’s block. It happens, especially when you have spouses, children, mortgages, cats, dogs, ferrets, migraines, sex lives, warrants. While I do have a job, hobbies and a social life, I don’t have that other stuff, just the occasional mouse running around my apartment that I like to feed. Soon I anticipate more going on so who knows how often I’ll be in here.

But up ‘til now, of course the fuck I’ve been able to post regularly! What else have I got going on…sigh…

So you are it, friends! Until that next piece of – I mean – until that next fine, fine person comes along – who’m I kiddn’, I’m pushing the envelope, I’m old as shit, my day is done, my coins are tossed, the jig is up, well is dried, cookies fried –

— Friends, I’ve seen it all, I’ve tasted wine, and not forgotten. I’ve loved, I’ve lived I’ve laughed, I’ve danced the dance and tweaked my consciousness. I’ve felt, I’ve licked, I’ve spat, I’ve chewed, I’ve ea-ten off, of every sur-face, but now, more o-d-ious, more hi-de-ous, is I just vo-mi-ted in Word Press.

I bought a “humane” mouse trap a couple of weeks ago, a metal box with holes on either side and a handle. You slide the top open to put food in. The mouse goes in and triggers a mechanism that traps him. For each of the three days prior to my purchase three baby mice visited. I trapped each of them in a shoe box and let them loose in the woods. Years ago I trapped a mouse on a glue trap. He was on there bleeding, squeaking — I cried all day, swearing never to kill another mouse. The next one who came I fed.

After that third baby mouse a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to get the trap, I didn’t see any more. The contraption made me nervous. I feared hearing the clacking noise caused by the mouse getting trapped inside. I checked, peering into the holes every day — or I’d kick it. Days went by and and no mice.

Last night at 4am I heard skittering, clacking, scraping. It was a mouse in the box. It frantically scratched, scraped and clacked, desperately trying to get out. I let it go on. I wasn’t going to the woods at 4am to let it out. It disturbed me emotionally so when I slept, I dreamed of holding the mousetrap, a larger version, with a dog inside, frantically butting at the top of the box. I could see its head. I was on the train taking it somewhere to release it. There was another dream with two mice and some other kind of creature in the box.

I woke up preparing to free the mouse. I sank inside, thinking of it in that small space with the bits of bread with peanut butter I had put in there. (I tear up typing this part.) He was hungry, so it was a logical place for him to be. He had no idea he’d be trapped. I shook the box lightly to make sure he was in there. He poked his nose into one of the holes. He was in there.

Across the street I placed the metal box on the dirt, turned the box sideways and slid the top off. After a couple of seconds, I told it to go, go, be free, run. Finally it scampered up the hill through the dirt, its tail trailing behind. I breathed out and headed back, thinking that the trap was not humane at all as the thing is in there terrified.

Should I just let the little bastards run around here until they die in the walls or find their way to another apartment? After work I came home and looked out the window at the woods. Where is the mouse now, I wondered. What is he eating?