Crap happens (literally, in this case)

Sometimes life gets so habitual that when people ask us how we’re doing, Jon and I always answer: “Same old same old,” or the classic “nothing too dramatic going on right now.” But here’s an event that proves out of the ordinary … :

Last Tuesday was an unseasonably nice, cool morning and Jon was driving to work after the previous evening of relatively short-lived (25 minutes) yet exhilarating and inspirational fireworks we’d watched in nearby Tubac, AZ. As he calmly drove on to work, all of a sudden, something caught his attention in his peripheral vision, as its furry little body ran along his driver’s-side window sill from back to front. Startled, Jon shrieked, undoubtedly terrorizing the mouse, who immediately dropped to the floor by Jon’s leg.

Jon stopped the car and collected all the trash from the floor (we are the original water-bottles-anywhere-and-everywhere couple) and didn’t see any sign of his newfound furry friend. The mouse had completely disappeared.

After work, Jon went back to the car, worried about smelling the odor of death. (Hey, we live in Arizona, after all. It gets “stinking hot” here, as Jon describes it.) But this mouse was lucky: Last week was unseasonably cool, only in the 90s rather than around 110 as usual. So no rancid smell after work. Maybe the mouse had left?

On the way home, Jon looked back and out of the corner of his eye, who should make another appearance but Mr. Rat, right on the back seat.

On his way home that night, Jon purchased two black, old-fashioned death machines (snap traps), loaded them with peanut butter, and armed the car. The next morning it seemed the mouse was uber-appreciative because the traps were licked clean – but the mouse was nowhere to be seen!

So Jon drove the car to work again, figuring again that he might find (or at least smell) roasted mouse at the end of the workday. But instead, he was greeted by several deposits. Seems the mouse had begun digesting the peanut butter.

Turns out there’s something called “live traps,” which capture the mouse rather than kill it. So once Jon mentioned those, this animal lover encouraged him to buy those instead. So thank goodness, the next day, Jon picked up two live traps and peanut buttered them and put them in the car when he got home that night. Before going to bed, Jon thought he would check the traps. Both live traps were sprung but empty. Being frustrated but not having much to lose, Jon merely resprung the two live traps and went to bed.

In the morning, the front-seat live trap remained unsprung. However, the live trap in the back was sprung. Jon thought, “Aha, now I've got him!” And that’s exactly what happened. That morning when Jon drove down our street to work, about a mile away from our house, he stopped by the side of the road and opened the live trap to fully view the culprit. A tiny 2” gray mouse jumped about a foot out of the trap, then walked calmy into the bushes, he said. Afterwards, Jon commented that he was amazed at the amount of “rat rocks” in the now-empty trap!