True Life Tales Of Terror

I had an update for the Pirate Ship of Child Joy all ready to go. It's taking shape nicely looking all pirateshipy and everything. Really. I swear. It's just that I somehow managed to idiotically break Lu's camera so I don't have any actual evidentiary photographs. So instead I have an allegedly humorous story.

Lisa has a very funny post up about a humorous encounter of the mouse persuasion. It brought to mind a Six/Trooper/Mouse interaction from a few years ago.

It's important to keep in mind that Trooper was a trained and experienced hunting dog. That is he could go out in the field, find small animals (usually of the feathered kind but not always), flush them out, chase them and then pick them up and bring them to Daddy after he'd fired several dozen shot shells at them. Ok, It.

So we're at home, just Trooper and me. I heard that scritching sound we're all familiar with. Mouse sounds. In the kitchen. I carefully explored the area, all the while trying to convince my hunting dog to "hunt 'em up". He was a bit confused. I mean this is the kitchen for Ghu's sake not the field. Hunt what up? Where? How!?

At some point (really, the whole stressful incident is a bit fuzzy) the mouse presented himself. Suddenly. I'm quite certain that I was very manly and macho about the unexpected intrusion. Quite certain. He ran around the kitchen for a bit then took up a hide/ambush position under the rolling counter. I coaxed Trooper out from under the desk (he must have heard something that convinced him it was the end of the world. I have no idea what that might have been. None at all. Sniff.) and set him up to watch for our adversary whilst I girded my loins and weaponed up. What to use to dispatch an 8 ounce furry terror? My eyes light upon my 8 inch K-Bar lying on the countertop. Hey, I'm a guy.

Now properly equipped to face the interloper I decided to force the issue. If he thought I'd just blithely enter his kill zone and stick a hand of other soft appendage into his cleverly laid trap Mister Mouse had another think coming. Carefully, keeping my situational awareness at UltraThreatLevelFireEngineRed, I moved the counter aside. Can you feel the tension?

Apparently I did.

Mister Mouse must have sensed that the situation had gone into the dumper and that more direct action was called for. He darted out from the under the counter and charged me! I did the Dance Of Avoidance while shouting at Trooper to "Get Him. Sic Him Boy. Kill That Damn Mouse"! Trooper, who'd never heard such commands in his life, joined me in the dance and added his voice to the cacophony by barking out his enthusiasm for what was obviously a new game. We careened around the room, barking and shouting and eeking until I remembered. Hey I have a large knife in my hand, I should stab the mouse with it. Genius! Whereupon I started wildly stabbing at the mouse scurrying around the kitchen floor while screaming like a prepubescent child of the female variety. Trooper's barking picked up in tempo and vigor as he transitioned from dancing joy to dodging concern over the flashing death in my right hand. I say flashing death but really it was more like flashing incompetence. I managed to hit everything but Trooper. And the mouse.

I may have missed that mouse but I'm positive I scared him out of a few years of life. Certainly Trooper was well and truly impressed. I did however manage to put a few knife shaped divots in the linoleum floor. The mouse, taking advantage of the diversion provided by my blind, panic stricken orgy of buffoonery, scurried to the garage door and disappeared under it and into the relative safety of my powertool filled work room. It was either a fear fueled feat of legerdemain or perhaps just a case of a small rodent doing what it did best. I thought I heard a snicker of derision as he vanished but by that time my pulse was racing and my breathing sounded like the dying convulsions of a mortally wounded water buffalo so it may have just been my imagination.

As I calmed and returned to some semblance of rationality it struck me that this was probably not my finest hour. Perhaps this was best kept just between Trooper and myself. Of course there was small matter of the multiple knife gouges in the floor and the general state of disarray of the kitchen. There was no way to explain that away short of fighting off an unexpected attack by Gnome Ninjas (are attacks by Gnome Ninjas ever expected?). At least nothing Lu was going to buy at any rate. She's so suspicious. I put the knife gently away, patted Trooper on the head, vowed to buy mouse actual traps and consigned myself to my fate.

I like to think that the mouse later told that story to his mouse friends over a beer at the local mouse drinking establishment. I like to think that he related the horror and danger. How he barely escaped from the knife wielding Hurricane of Terror with his life. How he was so close to death he could hear the Harps playing in Mouse Heaven. How lucky he was that he avoided near certain dismemberment at the hands of an obviously trained killer.

But somehow I don't think that's the way he told it.

Lisa complains that there wasn't a man around to empty the trap after she (somehow) intelligently managed to trap her mouse without destroying her house while simultaneously endangering the life of every living thing therein except said mouse.  I say she's probably lucky I wasn't around.

Stupid mouse.

Six