The Strange Case Of The Vanishing Field Mouse
I usually know when a mouse gets in our house, because of the surprisingly loud scream my wife makes when she spots one. Usually at 3:00 in the morning. Then I get the nearly impossible task of trying to catch the mouse and throw it out of the house. I am 2 for 4 using the catch and release method. I was forced to deploy traps for the others.
But I’ll never forget one mouse. It was unique.
My wife woke me up at 7:30 and said “Lucy (our cat) did her job. There is a mouse in the music room. In your guitars.” Well, first of all, Lucy didn’t do her job because she didn’t catch the mouse. Typical suburban cat. So I go in the room and start pulling out guitar cases and the mouse runs under my desk. So I pull out the desk and the mouse runs behind my amps. I pull out one amp and the mouse disappears. Boom. Vanished. I name the mouse Houdini.
I figure it must have run out of the room. I look all over and can’t find it. So I go back to bed.
I wake up later and take a shower and then go back in the music room and look behind the amps. I see the mouse again. I tilt back the amp and boom. It vanishes again. This mouse knows magic.
Then I remember that my bass practice amp has a small gap under its back plate. I turn the amp over, look in the slot, and the mouse is inside the amp. So I quickly unplug the amp and carry it outside. I look inside the slot again and boom. The mouse has vanished again.
I shake the amp and look inside. No mouse. But I know it’s in there. So I go get a screwdriver and unscrew the back plate of the amp. And the little critter has curled up against the speaker cone, under the wires. So I carry the amp outside of our yard, through the fence gate, and poke the mouse out from behind the wires with the screwdriver. Then I shake him out of the amp and he takes off running for the field. He looked sad.
Now I’m no scientist, and I can’t prove it using established scientific methods, but I like to think that this mouse simply liked music.
Anyway, I might name my next band “Mouse Hunter.”
Photo by Yosuke Muroya
