Cat vs mouse. The season finale

cat and mouse.  Me against him. 

I have a mouse problem.  I’ve had it for weeks.  He’s little, mousy brown and gray, with a little white spot just above his right ear.  We’ve been arguing for weeks.  He lives in my van.

I first noticed when my horseradish was chewed on in my glove compartment.  Just a nibble out of each package.  But enough that I would never use them. 

Then there was a roll of nested toilet paper.  That was gross to clean up.  I wondered how he got in, but mice are bad this year, and I live on a farm.  He probably crawled in my warm engine after I pulled up home sometime, and fell in love with it. 

So I clean up the van.  I found a few remnants, and no mouse.  As I finished, he ran in front of me, I shrieked, and he jumped on the ground.  I assumed this meant the game was over, set, match.  This was my first good look at him, and he was kind of cute.  And fat. 

The next day, the remnants of a hamburger from the day before …. Chewed on.  The mouse is still around.  I set a trap with peanut butter on it, and it’s undisturbed, but there is a paper chewed right next to it. 

I set the trap, he leaves a mark that he was there, but he isn’t going to be caught.  Me and this guy have been going the rounds for ages.  The packages of peanuts in my glove compartment chewed open and took forever to clean out.  A slight nibble on a seatbelt.  The drawer under the passenger seat carries an emergency supply of sugar for me, and my caramels all had one little corner missing from them, in mouse sized nibbles. 

This was war.  Cleaning the van doesn’t work.  Because …. Well, I have three kids, I am not a clean vehicle person to begin with, and I live in the van practically. 

If it’s left there, he chews on it, and he’s driving me nuts.  Megan drops her bottle, its’ too late to go back for it, and the next day the nipples chewed through. 

I leave garbage bags there to clean out the van during my break, and there is a hole nibbled in them before I get back to the van. 

I pull up to Winco and the stupid thing jumps out of MY door when I open it, and stares and me, then scurries under the van.  Its’ the same creature, I know it.  He didn’t leave!  And it’s not a new one, it’s the same thing. 

Obviously he is getting back in.  If I was smart, I would have gotten back in the van, and pulled out right there.  But I didn’t and he stays. 

Today I get in the van, and a smell assaults my nostrils.  The mouse died in there yesterday.  And it reeks!  So I was thinking, and the win is bittersweet.  I didn’t catch it with a trap, although I’ve tried.  It just… died, probably of heat yesterday.  So my opponent fell to the ground, and I caught the snitch. 

So I won, or did I?  Now I get to clean the van, and search for the dead mouse, at which time I get to dispose of him.  I think in dying, he got the last word, game set, match, I lose.