"By Jove, I've Got It!!!"

I finally come home tonight after spending most of the weekend in SGV on my parents' couch (literally, as that's where I slept last night and spent most of my time sitting and dozing off to basketball games) to see that my roommate has returned but is once again disappeared (her stuff was gone Friday night and wasn't here when I left early Saturday), so I trudge in with all my stuff, and when I come into my room, I notice the visible door to the mousetrap was down.

Knowing my track record with the little thing, I didn't think it was caught quite yet, but I was excited in the anticipation. I removed the covering I put over the trap as best as I could to find THE MOUSE caught in the cage!!! HOORAY!

The thing really is a baby. It's a dark brown/charcoal kind of color, and it's teeny. From nose tip to butt, I can probably say it's 2.5-3 inches long.

As happy as I am that I've finaly caught it, I do feel badly for it, for I don't know how long the thing has been in there, especially during this really hot weekend. Granted, I gave it plenty of peanut butter in the trap to lure it, but if it was caught sometime yesterday, it's basically been caught in the thing for too long of a time, and surely the little thing is scared out of its wits right now. Given it was already pretty late, I didn't want to take it down to our nearest park tonight, because I'm a little timid and afraid to drive down to my local park at night in the not-so-safest neighborhood in which I live. So I slipped it a bit more peanut butter in one of the little cracks on the top of the trap, and took a wad of a napkin, soaked it, and stuck it halfway into the trap as well so it could try to lick some water from it to keep itself okay through the night. As I type this, I can hear it rustling around, trying to make its escape. Unlike the mug trap, I'm pretty happy that the mouse is relatively okay in its temporary home right now; had it been caught in the mug, it may not have had enough air for it to breathe, and in this heat, would have easily suffocated.

Of course, as my luck goes, I don't have the easiest of schedules tomorrow. I have to be at the Getty Center at 9 tomorrow, and that means there will be an inevitable amount of traffic to face to get there at that hour. As I was preparing my clothes for tomorrow (as I do have to look decent and presentable), I kept thinking about where/how I would let this little mousey go. Going to the park would be a bit out of the way, and I really dreaded the endless trek through the 10 for two hours.

Then it dawned on me: I could basically make the drive up to work, drop the mouse off in some super shrubby area that I know have a good deal of mice anyway, ramble off to the Getty which is only 6 miles from work. I just hope that there isn't a GREAT deal of drivers trying to make their way to the 405 as I will be in that short 3 mile stretch, but by the time I hit the freeway, it shouldn't be so bad (and I could always take Sepulveda). Of course, 405S in the morning is much worse than 405N at that time, but I'd rather deal with that for a mile or two than parking lot traffic on the 10 for the majority of the trip. Plus, this alternate route is only about 2 miles longer than the 10, and it theoretically saves me 20 minutes in the worst traffic.

I'm very happy to know that the mouse will finally be leaving my house, and that I'll be able to let it go in a place that has a fighting chance at surviving, and is not out of my very, very long day ahead.

My mouse saga is almost at an end, and I wonder how I'll feel when I finally let the little thing go. I'm sure I'll be happy, and when it goes, I'll send a little prayer that the thing doesn't fall victim to my boss' hunter of a cat.