The Mouse Trap - stories for my grandchildren

No. Not Agatha Christie's long-running play (more than 24,000 performances and counting). The small contraptions used to control rodent population. But I'm ahead of the story.

For a period of time Barb and I made regular trips to Colorado. I wrote about the Trekking era here. But there were many other trips as well. Once we flew to Colorado Springs, rented a car and drove a grand loop through Colorado (640 miles) one weekend just to look at the Aspens. Glorious.

Often we made our way to the Leadville area, where friends had a Bed and Breakfast in a wonderful old restored mansion. One summer we imposed on these same friends and stayed in a pop-up camping trailer they had parked on property near Twin Lakes. It was a very pleasant accommodation, until night came and we bedded down, only to find the trailer had mice. Wee little creatures that scampered all over, gnawed noisily on the foodstuffs, and delighted in running up and down your prone body as you tried to sleep.

Tried is the operative word - I found sleep to be impossible when, just as you are about to doze off, some little critter runs over your head! So after a sleepless in Twin Lakes night, we journeyed to the Safeway in Leadville in search of mousetraps.

With such a wide variety of animals in Colorado - bears, mountain lions, bob cats, wolves, coyotes - I guess mice were not considered much of a problem in Leadville; the only traps we could find were tiny little imitations of La Brea tar traps. Little trays of a very sticky substance with a few grains of some kind of seed sprinkled in the middle. The idea was the mouse would be attracted to the seed, step into the sticky stuff and remain fast until disposed of later. So, we bought some, brought them back, and when bedtime came, placed them in appropriate locations. Problem solved.

Having been up most of the previous night, I had no trouble dropping right off to sleep. But after a short time, I awakened to a little "swish, swish, swish" sound. Found the flashlight, and discovered that a mouse had indeed taken the bait, but with only his two left feet in the trap. With the other two, he was pushing the trap in circles in his attempts to escape. Sort of like a little surf board. Swish, swish. Round and round.

Nevertheless, the mouse was caught! Now, all I had to do was... was... what was I going to do with this very alive mouse? The first inclination was to just toss him outside. But wait. Our hosts had a couple of dogs, who largely fended for themselves and would make a meal of a mouse, BUT this one had a little tar pit attached. I could just picture one of the dogs showing up at the house the next morning with a tar-pit mustache securely attached to his lips! No, I couldn't just throw it out the door.

But it's the middle of the night at elevation in Colorado and it is cold out there, dear hearts. I'm not going to go wandering around looking for a humane, effective way to dispose of this mouse! Wait! There's a bucket by the door. I'll put mouse and trap under the bucket, put a big rock on it and deal with it all the next morning.

This story would end nicely if we had had more little tar pits than there were mice. We didn't. And in spite of my best efforts, the bucket was overturned and all the traps were gone the next morning. I don't know if the dogs got into them or not. Perhaps there was a coyote or two wearing tar-pit embellishments the next morning. We didn't stick around to see.