426: A MOUSE AND A BUCKET OF DOOM

I was enjoying my peppermint tea when the phone rang. It was my senior friend M.

A long time widow, M is holding on to her small bungalow like cheese to pizza. She has friends of all ages, and a bunch of sweet relatives who visit often.

M hates wrestling with weeds, so I became her gardener.

But this phone call wasn't about weeds.

"There's mouse poop in my cereal cupboard," she wailed loud enough to bother bullfrogs in South Carolina. 

I told her to sit tight. I'd be straight over. Ten minutes later I knocked on M's door. She opened it, eyes wide.

"I can't go into my kitchen until that mouse is gone."

"Don't worry. I have a plan." I carried in a bucket and a bag of sunflower seeds. 

M looked at me.

"What are you going to do? Don't you need a mouse trap to catch mice?"

"Mice are crafty little devils, well versed in the art of eating and running. Let me try an idea I found on the internet."

M sighed and sat on her husband's once favorite chair. I filled the bucket with water, leaving six inches of space at the top, spread sunflower seeds evenly over the water and placed the bucket near the scene of the crime.

M waited in the big chair.

"Okay, M, the trap is set, but what about your dinner?"

"I'll go across the street and eat with B," she said."

Both long time widows, B and M look out for each other. I gave M a hug and went home. Next morning, crack of dawn, my phone rang. It was M.

"I'm too frightened to go check that bucket, she whispered, as if the mouse could hear every word.

"I'll be right there."

I biked up the street and rang M's bell. She whipped her door open like she was expecting an all night rave. She motioned toward her kitchen.

"I can't go in there."

I tiptoed into the kitchen as if stalking a moose and stared into the bucket. There was a mouse. Floating. Feet up. Like it had just discovered the truth about life, that sometimes what looks like a good thing, turns out to be a dud.

"M," I shouted, "your mouse is no more, it's done, gone and never more will it poop in your cereal cupboard."

"WAIT," M hollered. 

"Let me turn up my hearing aid."

"M, your mouse is KAPUT."

"Oh, thank you."

"M, let's go outside. You need to show me where you'd like me to plant these perfectly good sunflower seeds."

"We'll give the mouse a proper burial at the same time, and then go to Cory's for breakfast. The pancakes are to die for."