A Mouse Story

Sunday morning Grandpa looked in one of our bottom kitchen drawers and said, "Oh, no!" Not a loud "Oh, no!", but a soft "Oh, no", and that usually means some kind of trouble that will be tricky to solve.

In that drawer were packages of sugar, flour, dry cereals, and cornmeal. We saw little bits of the food packages torn into tiny pieces and some of the food was scattered around the bottom of the drawer along with lots of tiny things that looked like black rice. Oh, no....it's mouse poopies! We looked in another cupboard by the refrigerator and it had little mouse poopies, too. Oh, no!

We didn't know what to do. It was Sunday, and we didn't want to go buy any mouse traps, so we cleaned up the drawers and cupboards and put the food in hard containers that a little mouse could not open. All the rest of that day and night whenever I heard any tiny sounds, I was sure it was the little mouse scurrying around in my kitchen! We would wait and decide what to do the next day.

In the morning we were both in the kitchen getting ready to eat breakfast. Grandpa was over by the dishwasher getting ready to make a smoothie with frozen fruit. I was getting cooked rice out of the refrigerator for my favorite breakfast. Suddenly Grandpa said, "Don't move!", but he said it in a whisper.

I looked at Grandpa and said, "Why?". He said again, "Don't move....look over there", and he was looking carefully at the big red cookie jar that is shaped like an apple. I looked too, and suddenly I saw a little gray mouse peeking back at us from behind the cookie jar!

Grandpa picked up my kitchen sponge with a handle and started to move toward the mouse. I said, "You're going to try and get him with a sponge??" That seemed funny to me! But when Grandpa reached over and tried to bonk the mouse with the sponge, it broke! The sponge part broke right off the handle. He felt bad about that and said, "Sorry." It was a new sponge, too! The mouse was a little bit scared now, so he ran behind the cookie jar while Grandpa started to look around for something else that might help.

The next thing he picked up was a blue kitchen towell. That kind of surprised me, too. Grandpa has funny ideas sometimes! "Uh oh!", I said, "The mouse is going to jump!" We both looked and the furry little critter was right by the edge of the counter top and he was getting ready to jump off onto the floor. But he must have thought it looked like a long ways down there, so he ran back behind the cookie jar to think about it a little longer. Soon he noticed Grandpa sneaking up closer with his kitchen towell, so the mouse ran back over to the edge and looked down again, trying to decide if he should jump off.

Well, he thought about it a little bit too long, because Grandpa swooped over and brought that dish towell down on top of him, and then he bundled that little mouse up in the towell like a scrunched up piece of dirty clothing.

Now suddenly I felt bad for the little mouse. He sure did make a mess in my kitchen, but he was only trying to stay warm and get something to eat, so I said to Grandpa, "Don't hurt him! Just take him out to the woods and let him go!" Grandpa said, "That's just what I'm going to do." So he took that scrunched up towell with the little mouse trapped inside and walked outside to the back of our yard, and when he got to the woods he shook the towell and sent the mouse back to the wild places that he was supposed to be living in. Grandpa and I were very happy with how things turned out.

Is this the end of the story? Well it is for now. We just hope that our little mouse didn't have any other mousie friends or family that might still visit our kitchen. And we also hope that he doesn't find his way back inside! If he does, I'm sure Grandpa will be ready with another kitchen towell. And I'm going to go buy another sponge on a handle to put by the sink, but next time I'm not going to let Grandpa try to bonk a mouse with it.