(Part III. Continued from Tenant Vs. Might Mouse)
Wifey tends to call me from time to time at work and check if I am coming home for lunch. It's usually to see if she should walk the dogs my way and meet up. I, as much as I love to mess with her, tell her that she has 15 minutes to ask the Italian guy to get out of our bed before I make it home. He must get dressed really fast, because he is never there when I arrive.
I got a call from her today a bit before lunch. It was to inform me that the mouse is back and is making noise under the oven again. She asked if I can come and "take care of him" so that she can get back to studying for her test in fabric class. I have no idea how difficult it is to learn about fabrics, but apparently, the light sound that she slept through all last night, was suddenly so loud that she couldn't remember if silk has more or less carbons in it then cotton (I don't know anything about fabrics, so don't start sending me angry letters about how silk doesn't even have carbon in it. I don't know anything about clothes, I just know how to separate them before throwing them back in the laundry basket so that Wifey can do it. You turn white bed spread into pink salmon color one time in your marriage and suddenly you are off laundry duty for the rest of your life).
When my wife says "come home to take care of him", I, in my violent and very graphic mind, automatically assume she is asking me to come and kill the bastard now rather than wait until I get off work. I decide to take an early lunch and head home. I chose to take the villain role in my head and even listened to some really dark classical music on the way home (think: the music playing in the background during Silence of the Lambs when the guy holds the dog over the well). I show up at the house like Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield when they arrived at the college dorm. Ready to kill.
The first few minutes in the house I am prepping. I roll up my sleeves. Get an old t-shirt to put the guy in once I "take care of him". You know, prep the kill. Now, I am not a violent person at heart. Hell, I was a junior docent at the nature center in Los Angeles years ago. I love animals. But, this guy obviously took a hit by having himself get stuck in the trap and it was in misery. I was the angel of death who has to take him out of this said misery. I don't want to kill him, but someone has too.
I lift the oven and I see the little one. His back foot stuck in the trap. He still had peanut butter on his face. He started screaming again when the oven lifted. Wifey immediately begins oiling up the soft heart engine. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife for being such an animal lover. But she asked for this. Or atleast I thought she did.
"Honey, what's wrong? why are you tearing up?" I say to her while holding the oven up and looking at the victim.
"Do you have to kill him?" she asks
I should have seen this coming. My wife changes her mind as much as outfits on the way to an all girls night out. She wants Flaffel, then she thinks she may want italian food. She wants to wear the grey sweater, nope, that will look much better tomorrow cause it cloudy, she wants to change into the black hoodie. I love her to death, but when it comes to death, she REALLY changes her mind.
"Honey, he is stuck in a trap with his leg. I can't dump him outside in the street, its too cold."
She replies "Then you have to do it quickly. I don't want him to feel any pain".
Before she even finishes that sentence I am already holding up a hammer.
"No! No! You can't do this. He is so little and hurt. He needs help. He is hurting" she says
"Honey. Please go in the bedroom with your laptop. Shut the door. Open iTunes and put on some Metallica and full volume. You may also want to place your head underneath a pillow."
I shut the door slowly to the bedroom and turned around with the hammer toward Mickey Mouse.
I couldn't just look at him. He was laying there breathing fast. His big black eyes looking right at me. I felt like his face will haunt me forever. So I pick him up by the trap and place him in the old t-shirt. I wrap the old shirt around him. He start crying again. As seconds feel like minutes, I feel the hammer getting heavier and heavier. I watch the shirt shake from him trying to escape.
I can't do this. I just can't pick this hammer up and strike. If this was a movie where a new beast just escaped from a lab, I would be that guy at the beginning of the movie who dies first because he took too long to raise the gun and pull the trigger. Like that guy in the movie, I am too much of a softy.
I slowly unwrapped the poor bastard. I grabbed the trap and lifted the metal latch. He crawled away back into the shirt. Obviously injured.
"Honey!" I called my wife.
She exits the room with Metallica NOT playing in the background.
"I couldn't do this" I said to her holding up the empty trap.
For as much as most men would tell me that you should never admit to your wife when you are weak because...well, its a sign of weakness. I must say that her face cracked a smile when she noticed I freed him from the trap.
"Where is he?" she asks me
"Right here" I said pointing at the shirt.
"Can I see him?" she says in the voice of a six year old girl who wants to pet one
She kneels down and unwraps the shirt. For a split second, he lays there. Motionless. I seriously thought the bastard was going to die in my arms right there on the floor. I felt like he was going to look up and say "Please tell me Ma that I love her. And tell my children I died a hero!" I actually felt bad for putting out that trap in the first place.
Then, without a second to spare, the little *hithead jumps up, gets on all four feet and bolts toward the heater. This guy was running so fast, Hulk Hogans' son wouldn't be able to catch up to him in his ride. He was as fast as lightning. He knew exactly where he was going. I stood up and grabbed the shirt wanting to throw it at him. My wife lets a "Oh my God!" out. The bastard runs under the heater and crawls into a hole in the wall and vanishes.
I remain standing in the middle of the livingroom/kitchen (its a small apartment). I am motionless. The bastard won. He got to my inner soft spot and then took advantage of it.
He won.
My wife looked around the heater for a few seconds, and then sighed in relief and walked over to sit on the couch. Picked up the laptop and got back to chatting with her Swedish girlfriend.
"Atleast you didn't have to kill it" she says typing away
Right honey. Because "Taking care of him" was not why I came home during my lunch hour for.
I went back to the office listening to classical music. It made me upset that after waking me up at 5:00 am and keeping me up and stressed all this time, the little bastard got away. So like my wife I changed something....
...for the next 4 blocks, I listened to Metallica.
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