We Still Have A Mouse....And His Name Is Edison.

As I reported in an earlier post this week, we have a mouse in our house, which we discovered a couple of days ago, when we caught him red-handed at Kate's food bowl (Kate is our 19 year-old cat).  We've been waiting two days for our humane traps to be sprung, and last night, as we were watching the "So You Think You Can Dance" results show, we heard a noise in the kitchen. Lo and behold, we'd caught our mouse!

We'd planned to release our mouse in a nice park a mile or two away, but as we drove away from our home, I started feeling a little sad. I know that most people use mousetraps, kill the mice, and don't think another thing about it. That isn't my style, but more importantly, darned if this mouse wasn't the cutest mouse I'd ever seen. And I've seen a lot of mice. I had white mice as pets when I was little, and I had mice invade my home when I was a graduate student living in Iowa (of course, back then, I confess, I secretly released them near the home of my mentor and tormentor..but I've grown and matured since then).

I have never seen a mouse as cute as this little guy was when we caught him by Kate's bowl. He was fluffy and sweet, and I swear he pulled the Puss in Boots face from Shrek. If he'd had a tiny hat and wee little boots, they would've recast Puss in Boots as Mouse in Boots. Also, as a child, I loved The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper, a story of how three brave mice rescue the Macy's Santa Clause from his kidnappers). And my stepmother, who has collected little mouse figurines and things for, well, ever, has gotten me only slightly addicted to the precious House Mouse designs (see left).

So there we were, with a mouse that was as cute as a button and used to living off our crumbs and cat food, a mouse that was a house mouse...and we were going to release him into the wild? Where cats, hawks, dogs, and cars might cause him harm? I looked at Leo. He looked at me.

And before we knew it, we were at Meijer, picking out a Habitrail (a lot like the one pictured at right) at 11:30 at night.  

And here's where things get really interesting.

When we went into the store, we left the mousetrap in the car, thinking our mouse was safely locked inside the trap...but when we got back to the car, the trap was open. The mouse was loose in the car. Leo actually caught a glimpse of him before he scampered under the front passenger seat. Our theory is that, when we closed the car doors to go into the store, we jostled the trap just enough to permit the mouse's escape.

So there we were, standing in the Meijer parking lot on the wrong side of town at midnight on a Thursday night, a ridiculous Habitrail under my arm, and a bag of pet mouse paraphernalia on Leo's, laughing hysterically, and explaining what had happened to two guys in the parking lot (and we had them doubled over laughing, too).

What else to do, but go home and re-bait the trap? So we drove home, mouse loose in the car, which I'm sure I don't have to tell you is an somewhat unnerving experience. Due to a fear that, in retrospect, I honestly can't decide if it was irrational or not, I tucked my pants tightly around my legs to prevent any possible..I don't know...I guess I was worried the mouse would want to run up my pant leg or something (and okay, yeah, I guess that is pretty irrational, when I say it "out loud"). Though I was a little skittish myself, we agreed that it wouldn't serve anyone well if I was in the passenger seat, so I was the driver, and amazingly, despite that the mouse was, we thought, directly under the front passenger seat, Leo was quite calm the entire way home.

When we got home, we re-baited our trap with peanut butter, cracked the windows of the car, and went inside. Around 12:30, just as we were about to head upstairs for bed, we decided to check to see if we'd re-caught our mouse. We headed out to the car with a flashlight and...sure enough, we'd caught him for a second time (which, incidentally, does give me a bit of skepticism regarding his level of intelligence...I mean, really? Twice in one night?).

We went inside, placed the mousetrap in a secured location (held closed by a hefty bleach bottle) and set up our Habitrail, and moved it to the office, where our new friend now lives.

He seems to like his new environment, in particular the seeds and treats we gave him. We watched him until almost 2 AM, and Leo named him "Edison." 

In doing some research on Google, I discovered that the brown house mouse is the most common mouse sold in pet stores, and is also the most genetically-modified animal on Earth, meaning they're apparently great to experiment on. Edison will be the most spoiled mouse on Earth, I suppose, enjoying the same protected status as our chickens.

I know, it's a little outside-the-box to keep him, but honestly, he's the cutest mouse I've ever seen, and as much as I'm not a big fan of caging wild animals, he's a house mouse, which means he's used to the indoors and almost certainly safer here. We feel good about our choice, and Edison, well...he's already eaten halfway through his little bowl of food, really seems to love his exercise wheel, and is currently napping on a bed of fluffy cotton...so I think he's okay with it, too.