A Message to the Mice

This is a message to all you mice out there in my neighborhood, and especially those of you who are living in my walls.

I don't want to hurt you. You are fuzzy and cute and remind me of Gus Gus in Cinderella. I like your furry faces, twitchy noses and beady eyes. I am not crazy about your wormy little tales though.

You cannot live here in my house. This you have proven by your extreme lack of manners, including the way you opened that entire bag of unpopped popcorn in the pantry, and ate one of my toddler's granola bars without asking. Her last granola bar no less! You have also pooped in the kids snack basket. These things I cannot abide.

I have already been forced to harm two of your kinsman, and I shed tears for them.One perished quickly. The other I fear did not fare as well, since I was compelled to use the apparently not very humane sticky traps after the peanut butter went missing on the other kind, the trap still unsprung. (The man at Ace Hardware looked at me as though I were a monster when I bought the sticky traps. I'm sorry, but I refer again to the pooping in the snack basket incident in my defense.)

Yesterday, I caught one of your baby brothers in the living room. He was not much bigger than a quarter, and I scooped him up in a quilt. Toddler and I put him in a bug catcher and fed him taco shells. He pooped. Toddler thought perhaps we should dress him in little clothes (she was also thinking of Gus Gus I assume). We set him free in some bushes. Please, little mouse. Do not come back here.

So, to sum up: we are lovers of animals here. But we are also lovers of good hygiene. And we want our clean, health conscious friends to be still willing to come over here. If necessary, perhaps I can direct you to one of my neighbor's houses: maybe one who isn't fussy about smells and has pet food lying around. So good luck to you, mice. Don't let the door hit your little wormy tails on the way out.