And mouse makes three...

So, we have a mouse. Allegedly. I say that because, despite weeks of sightings by my usually fearless roommate, the God of Hairdos, I have yet to actually see our furry squatter. But, since she says she has seen it on several occasions, I will give her the benefit of the doubt. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of a rodent roaming the apartment then with the idea that my roommate has gone off the deep end.

Of course, it may be a little early to rule that latter idea out, as it seems The Mouse has it in for Simon. An evil mouse, this one. It waits, you see, until I have gone to bed or left the apartment to make its move. It started as a stroll across the kitchen into the pantry, a move made in a dimly lit room late, late at night. Did she really see it? Even Simon questioned it. After all, she'd been playing on her computer for a few hours – maybe what she saw was just her eyes playing tricks on her. Our landlord arrived with glue traps to bait the little bastard and the next day patched a hole in the pantry that The Mouse might have been using to gain entry. But, no. The Mouse would not so easily be thwarted. On the Sunday night after the first sighting, after I had gone to bed, I heard my name being yelled. Weird, I thought. Why doesn't Simon just knock on the door? I got up to see what was wrong and found her cowering on the couch, pointing at my desk. The Mouse had expanded his comfort zone and was apparently holed up behind my desk, taking refuge in an empty wrapping paper tube. For the next hour and half, during which I sent Simon to the thankfully 24 hour Walgreens to get more traps, I constructed an elaborate setup to prevent The Mouse from running while I flipped the tube up and into an empty tub of animal crackers. By the end of it, my trap was looking a little like this:



Somehow, The Mouse managed to escape. Needing sleep, I ordered Simon to go to her mother's house since it was obvious that mouse catching was not my forte.

Over the past few weeks, Simon's had more sightings. Always after I had gone to sleep. More traps were set up, to the point that there was no earthly way The Mouse could make it out of the pantry or kitchen without getting hopelessly stuck. And yet, last night, he managed it. The Mouse, while I was out, had run out from under the coffee table and darted under the couch. The same couch that Simon was sitting on. The Mouse, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

So what gives? As I said before, I'm going to give Simon the benefit of the doubt and say The Mouse is real. Is it super-intelligent? Well, it wouldn't be the first time we've been plagued by absurdly smart creatures. We were held hostage for several weeks in our apartment by a gang of mutant flies with an frightening capacity to strategize their attacks. So how did The Mouse get from the pantry to the couch without getting trapped? The answer, I think, is clear...



Knock, knock, Neo.