A Skritch In The Night

We finally got rid of a house guest last night. He was about two inches long, had beady eyes and a long tail. My older son, who has his private digs in the basement, heard him skritching about for several days and finally set a trap.
The trap, however, neither killed nor seriously injured him. (He was annoyed. He tried to bite my gloved son when the trap was removed.) So we had a highly emotional mouse on our hands—and my son was adamant that we were going to let him live.
My son went out in the garage and located an old terrarium that he’s used in the past for pet snakes and the like. He gave the mouse an old sock and part of an egg crate for housing and put him on the floor of his room where, we were assured, the mouse could not escape through the mesh lid on his new glass house. We fed him table scraps. (He seemed to really like pancakes.)
Throughout his stay we didn’t see much of him. The mouse pretty much remained in his sock and under the egg crate. I said, “Squee?” to him a couple of times, but he never answered. (I may have been using the wrong dialect—this was a field mouse.)
Then, again, “Mouse” may be a highly inflected language, something like Chinese. You can get all the words right to say, “Good morning, you’re looking lovely” and come out actually saying, “Your nose is red and your breath stinks”. It can be difficult to communicate with either the Chinese or mice.
Who knows how dreadfully I may have insulted that poor mouse. My son tells us he only came out at night—and didn’t speak to him either. Things continued in this fashion for about a week.
I must add here that the reason this field mouse was visiting us at all was that a major ecological disruption occurred in his old neighborhood. For years the mice lived in the woods across the street and we lived in houses on our side of the street. There was no undue interaction; we pretty much left each other alone.
Six years ago the bulldozers came. Woods and fields were swept away in a welter of roads, sewers and new homes. No more peaceful co-existence between man and mouse. (In Arizona they have the same problem with snakes; in California with mountain lions.)
The mice found new homes across the street—in my basement and a few of my neighbors’. Every fall seems to bring another venturesome mouse with the intent to stay warm for the winter. One year we had a whole family.
We trapped mama and baby mice in a large butterfly net and sent them into the woods BEHIND our house. Other mice died in traps or by poison. You begin to feel like, “It’s them or us”. I’m sure they feel the same way.
A full détente would probably call for vastly improved communication, but they don’t talk to me and I am completely unable to talk to them. And last night we had a total failure of communication.
My son’s idea was to keep the mouse in his warm terrarium, well supplied with peanut butter and pancakes until it got warm outside. Unfortunately no one was able to explain this to the mouse. Last evening we found him at the top of his glass house on the verge of successfully wriggling his way out. No! He was not again to have free run of the house.
We all agreed he’d overstayed his welcome. My wife and son loaded Mr. Mouse into the van and drove him to a wooded spot about a mile away. Here he was released near a hole in a tree stump—into which he dragged his sock and there he was left to survive winter as best he might.
I hope he does. Surely he remembers about hawks, cats and coyotes—and how to gather wild food. If he does he will have stories to tell his grandchildren that they will hardly believe.