Nut Job

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?

Free Dental Care at a Cost

I was thrilled to find inexpensive dental care.  At the medical building on the upper west side, the young black woman dentist jogged around busily.  I followed her up and down spiral stairs to tell her my dental woes.  The offices were decorated brown, in a seventies style.  She stopped and asked to see my teeth.  I opened my mouth.  “Oh yeah,” she said nodding and stepping away quickly as if able to determine the extent of my problems.  “We’ll get that fixed right away.  In fact we have a program.”  She said I qualified for a pro bono program.  I was in heaven.  “Let me make a call” she said, picking up the receiver from the multi-lined phone on the large brown reception desk.  The receptionist had left for the day.  Most of the lights in the reception area were turned out.

The woman the dentist called came quickly.  She was a middle-aged short, stocky woman in a brown suit with sensible shoes.  “Hi Sandee — yes you qualify for our program,” she said smiling.  “You’ll fix my teeth for free?”  “Yes indeed,” she said.  I couldn’t believe this was happening.  I felt like I had won a lottery.  She asked also if she could see my teeth.  She moved in and put her hand on my waist near my behind.  She asked me to open my mouth.  She peered inside then stuck her tongue in like a lizard.  “Wha?!”  I pushed back.  “Wait, come, I have to see.  For the program,” she said officiously.  I felt like a prisoner about to be raped.  She grabbed me and stuck her tongue in again.  I pushed her off and wrestled her to the floor before running out of the building.

I stood on an abandoned avenue, shaken and out of breath after running.  Above was bright blue sky and thick white clouds, but everything was gray.  Gray concrete slabs of sidewalk were crumbling and pieces were missing.  I walked to an area with a fence that had a destroyed building behind it.  The area looked like war torn Bosnia, with dilapidated, smoke-colored abandoned buildings and crumbling tenements.

Young men and women came out onto the street from a door on the side of a dilapidated building.  They had hair to their waists.  They were thin like high fashion models, dressed in pink, turquoise and yellow flowing clothes.  On the crumbling sidewalk by the fenced area, they set up children’s rocking horses with bright colored manes, a toy trombone and toy drum set.  The models played the toys like they were in a band.  They banged the horses and drums with sticks.  The ones playing the horses and drums stooped to play their instruments as they were so tall.

This was my dream.  I didn’t include the part before the dentist’s office where I’m on a seventies styled bus on my way to the dental office.  That would’ve made this already long post longer; besides, I didn’t think I needed to use that part…  Thanks for reading!  What kinds of crazy dreams do you have?