Last summer I was at home in Cleveland, Ohio. My parents are divorced, so it was just my mother and I. One night, I was watching the 3 a.m. syndication of Full House. Suddenly, my focus on the dazzling Miss DJ Tanner was distracted when something darted across my peripheral vision. I looked over and saw a mischievous little mouse. I was shocked, having never seen a mouse in my home that wasn’t in a cage.

When I was little, I had two albinos whom I named Pinky and Brain. Pinky began to develop flesh wounds, and eventually we realized that Brain was eating him. One day, my watering eyes discovered that Brain had finished the job. Pinky’s body, which Brain had completely skinned, laid buried in woodchips. We decided to let the murderous Brain go in the wild. “Let’s see if you’re fit enough to survive out here, you recessive-gened bastard!” I yelled as he scampered away.

The Brain incident left me with two fears: cannibalism and mice. The first explains why I refuse to eat the candy NERDs, while the latter relates to this story.

So there I stood, face to face with a wild mouse in my living room. I began to chase after him, but he was far too quick. It’s amazing that I can’t outrun an animal whose legs are only an inch long. This mouse was just like Speedy Gonzalez, minus the insensitive ethnic stereotypes.

I was sure that at any moment he would run into one of those mouse-sized arched doorways the bottom of the wall. Then I would reach my hand in, only to pull out a lit stick of dynamite.

I lost sight of him for a moment, but was fairly sure he ran into the laundry room. I closed the door to the room to trap him inside. After a few minutes of pondering my options, I decided to wake up my mom and ask for advice.

“Should I go in with a frying pan?” I asked.

“No,” she groggily responded. “You’ll never hit him, and even if you do, do you really want to splatter mouse guts?”

“Valid point. What if I trapped him under a bowl, slid paper under the bowl, and released him in the wild?”

“Too complex. Just wait ‘til tomorrow and get some mousetraps.”

Following her suggestion, I went to bed, leaving the rodent trapped in the laundry room. I didn’t sleep much that night. I kept hearing house creeks and irrationally assuming they were the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

“Is this the ghost of Pinky, back to haunt me?”

I was sure at any moment I’d feel the sting of a mouse bite. Then I began to ponder whether the bubonic plague was still around.

“It can’t be any worse than this case of genital herpes,” I assured myself.

The next morning I went to a hardware store to get mousetraps. I began to ponder just how it is a hardware store stays in business. There were five people in the store, four of which were employees. In addition, everything is dirt cheap. After finding the traps, I went to check out.

“Well let’s see. That’ll be negative $1.09,” the sweet old cashier said. “I actually owe you one dollar and …

“Oh, I forgot I have a coupon.”

“Well, then the store is yours,” he said as he handed me the keys.

I went home and set a mousetrap. Then I cautiously entered the laundry room. My shaking hand gently laid the trap behind the washing machine. I began to wonder if I would still be so afraid of the mouse if I domesticated him. Instead of the trap, I could lay down some empty toilet paper rolls, a wheel and maybe some woodchips. Our laundry room could just be one giant mouse cage that happened to store a washer and dryer.

I snapped out of the tree-hugger thoughts and waited anxiously for the bloodbath to ensue. Every few hours I checked the trap, but still no captured rodent. When 24 hours passed, Mom and I concluded that the mouse was never in the laundry room. We began to leave the door open again, and I placed mousetraps in other areas of the house.

That night I was out with my friends when I received a frantic phone call from Mom. “So I just did a load of laundry, and there is a dead mouse at the top. I’m not sure how he got in the wash without me knowing, but this is so disgusting. I don’t know how I’m going to dispose of this. I really need a man in the house to deal with this, and now you’re gone.”

“Please tell me you’re going to rewash those clothes.”