m-i-c... see me kill the mouse, k-e-y...why? well, duh...

Now I find out we have a fuckin' mouse in the house. Apparently The Man spent his lunch hour rushing back and forth in the kitchen trying to catch it. And I missed it! All the pitter-patter of his size 9s, all the terrified squeaking (that would be from me) and the cursing, oh, the cursing... My man can swear like a fourteen-year-old skater wannabe when he wants to (pretty damn often); sometimes he even thinks he can do it better than me (not fucking likely). I knew leaving the house was a bad idea. Why go out at all when it's so exciting around here?

Someone I know flushed a mouse once. It was swimming around the bowl, looking up at him like "save me, save me!" I guess it thought it would take a dip or something. He thought, Hell, it's not any bigger than your basic piece of shit. And it was Mickey Jones Locker for the mouse.
I asked him if he felt guilty.
"Drowning is supposed to be a painless death."
"People say that, but how does anyone know ?"
"Here, have another beer."

Ick. Mice are like spiders with fur. Nasty, vile little creatures. Double ick.

Except for Chirpy, the mouse we had as a pet. Now that was a cool mouse. Sometimes you end up with the savant of a species. Two members in our family have had one. The first was Chirpy, who my brother found in the salad bowl at school. Chirpy lived in his nightstand until Mom found out, then he was banished to the garage (Chirpy, not my brother.) My brother rigged up a little VW remote control car with a mouse-wheel in it (it was the 70s so it was an actual VW, not one of those plastic ones they make now) and Chirpy used to follow him all over the yard in the thing. Chirpy was an escape artist, though. He could get out of his cage. As long as he was still in the garage he would hang around, but once someone (Ok, me! Are you satisfied! I was like five for crissake!) left the door open just enough (a mouse needs like two centimeters to get through, but I still recall the lecture on pushing the door down all the way) and Chirpy got hit by a car. We buried him in a brick tomb. God, how pathetic was that? Our parents apparently caught on that we needed a real pet, because we got a dog pretty soon after that. Skipper was pretty smart, but he wasn't the other braniac pet.

The other one was Jasper, my goldfish. He lived in a beer pitcher in my room in college. He was the only goldfish I ever met that lasted longer than twelve hours. Jasper was smart. When I'd sit down at my desk he'd come round front and watch me and do tricks and stuff for food. Ok, so his trick was coming to the top of the water for food, but what could he do in a beer pitcher? Not exactly a fuckin' circus tent.

When they found out I was breaking the no pets rule, I had to find him a new home at The Man's house. One of his shithead roommates came up with the bright idea of giving him a little vodka. (Yeah, you college guys have a certain charm...) Didn't take much.

Alas, another burial at sea. Kind words were said, and we finished the bottle of vodka at the wake.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to hear about your history with cheap disposable pets, I too feel your pain. I had two iguanas, one of them turned yellow and died, the other one turned yellow and was about to die. So i took him outside and shot him in the head with my Red Ryder BB gun. The BB just bounced off his head, and he gave me this look like, "why greg? why?" I made sure the second BB went through though. I'm sorry i'm choking up now... I"m off