For a while, I’d just hoped that keeping the kitchen clean and food tightly sealed away would encourage the mouse to move on, but this stratagem backfired: It grew increasingly bold, even venturing tentatively toward the living room occasionally. Finally we broke down and got a trap and… the mouse vanished. Trap unsprung, bait untaken, but suddenly no sign of our furry little friend.  So now I have the following scene playing out in my head.

APT. KITCHEN, AFTERNOON: The mouse skitters out into the center of the kitchen floor, props up on hind paws, sniffing the air and looking about for signs of humans.

MOUSE: Hey, you guys? You guys, I just got the “Game of Thrones” Season 1 box set, I was thinking maybe we could order a four-cheese pizza, the tall hairy one could go out for a six of Magic Hat…

Something catches the corner of his eye; the mouse looks over his shoulder spots the trap for the first time.

MOUSE: Oh. Oh wow. You guys?

Mouse pads over to the trap, sniffing contemptuously at the smoked gouda, shakes its head slightly, more hurt and disappointed—and at a professional level, a little insulted by the crude latch mechanism—than truly angry.

MOUSE:  It’s like that, huh? Geez, I know I’ve been… but I really thought we had a kind of… [here the mouse see-saws its forepaws back and forth in the universal gesture for we’re-on-the-same-page-here-right?]  Yeah, I guess not. Ok, well.  Whatever you guys.

With an over-shoulder glance at the gouda bait—which he totally could extract safely, but doesn’t even want to now—mouse slowly pads back toward the kitchen cabinets, produces a tiny bindle (tied around a splinter) and squeezes through a gap in the woodwork out into the backyard, accompanied by a canned “AWWW”.  The CLOSING THEME FROM “THE INCREDIBLE HULK” TV SERIES plays as we FADE TO BLACK.

On the upside… no more mouse.