As a person gets older, their eyesight gets a bit worse, I have trifocals so I know it's true for me. They say when your eyesight starts to fail, your hearing gets better. It's an offset of the senses - as one weakens, another one improves.
In a quiet room, I can hear the slightest noise. The night before last I proved my point. It was late, but I still wanted my ice cream before bed. I took a Klondike Bar to bed and watched a bit of TV before going to sleep. (Ice cream is a staple of life - isn't it? A "must have" for me!) I took the empty wrapper and tossed it toward the small trash can I have sitting beside the bed, but it missed, unbeknownst to me at the time.
After it was dark and quiet in the bedroom, I heard a sound of crinkling paper on my left. I wondered what it was, but let it go. Later I heard the same sound on my right. Then I got curious. I turned on the light and looked around, but the only thing I found that was different was an empty candy wrapper, which I thought had one small piece of Hershey's chocolate bar left in it. It was crinkled and empty on my cedar chest to the left of the bed.
My instincts told me what to do next. The next day I stopped at the dollar store and bought a pack of mouse traps. That night I baited two with peanut butter and set them under the head of the bed, one on each side. I turned out the light, waited and listened.
It wasn't long before Ratatouille's cousin got hungry on his visit to my home, and I was obliging with his favorite peanut butter. In the midst of the quiet, I heard a "snap" and a "squeal" on my right. SUCCESS. I got my flashlight and looked on the floor where I had put it and sure enough, trapped.
I laid back down thinking, that solved that problem. But when I woke up the next morning, I remembered that someone had to move the tiny, gray, lifeless thing. So I got my handy reach-gripper from the kitchen, and the trash can. Ratatouille's cousin's funeral was held before 11 a.m. with no formal ceremony or religious service and no morners. He went to his great beyond with peanut butter on his lips. I was not saddened by his departure.
As I looked under the night stand where I had found him, I realized that the trap had moved slightly from where I had first seen it after the "snap" - it had rolled over on his last - jerk. Then I found the paper that I had heard the night before, under the night stand - the Klondike wrapper, on the opposite side of the room. That's when I knew I had missed the mark when I threw it away. Next time I'll be more careful, and those cousin's will hopefully not come back to visit, because they won't leave alive!
I must say this, it's the first mouse in this house as long as I can remember, back to 1971. But, they say there's a first time for everything.
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