"You caught a mouse."

This from eldest son, waking the wife and I a little before midnight.

Craaap. That means the gap under the front door wasn't the source. Either the mouse, assuming there is only one, has another way into the house, or we had at least two in the house.

In which case we may just be in the pre-infestation stage.

To find out if it is just one mouse, or many, we need to secure this mouse and reset the trap for the rest of the night. And this is how eldest son and I found ourselves trying to dump the mouse out of the trap into a plastic cookie dough container.

Problem is, the trap door sprung in the process, suspending the mouse in the door by its hip.

Problem is, when I pushed the door to release said mouse, the mouse decided running up my hand and wrist was preferable to falling into the bucket.

Problem is, mouse then bailed onto the kitchen cutting board, thence to the food and soda boxes beside the cutting board, thence to the kitchen floor.

And this is how eldest son and I found ourselves on our knees in the kitchen, me hastily building a Berlin wall out of cases of soda, and him blocking passage under the cabinets with his hand and a towel.

Which worked for a while. Minutes, maybe.

Maybe seconds that felt like minutes.

Aaaanyway, as I set in the last piece of mortar in my Great Wall, a tea towel, to seal the mouse-sized gap above the baseboard, the mouse made a break for it.

Right under eldest son's elbow, skirting past his knee.

And disappeared under the refrigerator.

Crap.

Eldest son seemed genuinely shocked that I then began restacking the soda cases in the corner, and headed off to bed.

"Aren't we going to at least barricade him into the kitchen?"

Uh, no.

Odds are, that mouse is no longer even in the kitchen, much less under the refrigerator. He's had free rein of this house for who knows how long, knows it better than us. I'm going back to bed.

Can see why eldest son was concerned though, seeing as how he still sleeps on the floor.

Did reset the live trap, though.

Had a mouse trapped in it by four o'clock, when the heeler mom woke me to go outside. Don't know if it's the same one or not. Hard to believe you could trap the same mouse at the same spot in the same trap with the same bait in just four hours.

Didn't release this mouse until after ten o'clock, after the elk flight was over. And, lest it be the same mousy, I hiked the two blocks to a park by the railroad for the release.

As I entered the first intersection, a couple from two blocks down pulled up. She rolls down her window, looks at the live trap in my hand, and asks,

"What kind of critters you hauling around today?"

Just a mouse. Taking it to your part of town to let go (which was true).

They were less than appreciative.

Took a good look at the rodent before letting it go by the lilacs by the picnic shelter in the park.

I think this is the same mouse. Certainly acted like it'd been through this before. Didn't see any blue on the tail, though.

So, mouse released, I stop to take a couple pictures of the bright yellow cottonwoods by the caboose. And here comes...

The Chief of Police.

Naturally. With another off-duty cop in the passenger seat of the town's fancy SUV.

Chief is ultra polite, and apologetic for asking when he knows it's none of his business, but he's curious.

"What are you doing?", nodding towards the empty live trap under my arm.

Just transplanting some indigenous wildlife into your jurisdiction without your permission. Why?

The off-duty officer's eyes open with caution. He hasn't quite kept up with the lingo, nor noticed the tiny live trap. I'm pretty sure he thinks I just released a wolf in the park. Or maybe a grizzly bear. He relaxes when I say it was just a deer mouse. A white-footed deer mouse.

Having just as much fun as I, the Chief explains "That's the kind that carries hantavirus." His deputy fretting again, we part company, me with a smile on my face.

But tonight, I have regrets. If these episodes have been with just one mouse, imagine how I've ruined its life. Here it was, with a secret passage into a warm pantry full of food, and a secret cache of at least forty sloe pits hidden away for the winter. I mean, that mouse was set for life. Or winter, whichever is shorter.

And now, it's been dumped in an open park which, according to the Chief, had a redtailed hawk in it just yesterday, has owls feeding in it every night, where every hole has a prairie dog in it, and coyotes sneak in at night. With no food at all.

From heaven to hell, and it's all my fault.

(And just in case this hasn't been just one mouse, the trap is set again tonight.)