26/01/2003 - 12:46 a.m.

Mouse Skin Rug

This is the No Shame piece I left out. At the time I thought it didn't go over so very well, but apparently it did.

A piercing scream rang through the Jones� house that bright September morning. Mr. Jones rushed into the kitchen to see his wife standing on a chair and screaming.

�What on earth is the matter with you?� he asked.

�A mouse,� Mrs. Jones replied meekly.

�Was the 1950�s house wife impression really necessary?�

She got down off the chair. �Of course it was necessary. The creature was huge. That�s the second one this week. They�re probably breeding in the walls. We�ve got to do something.�

�Don�t worry about it. It�s probably just one, and it�ll be gone soon enough,� Mr. Jones reassured her.

A few weeks later, Mrs. Jones was playing �Don�t Touch the Floor� all around the house, and making pointed remarks to her husband about exchanging the tablecloth in the dining room for carpeting. That evening Mr. Jones returned with several mouse traps.

A few days later as Mr. and Mrs. Jones sat down for an evening of television, from the kitchen they heard the snap of a mousetrap followed by soft squealing. They went together to the kitchen and there in the corner was the mouse, his neck caught and snapped in the trap. Mrs. Jones gasped at the macabre scene.

�That�s terrible! The poor little creature, did I ever tell you that my favourite cartoon character was Mickey Mouse? I feel just as though I�ve just murdered Mickey.�

Mr. Jones sighed. �It was your idea to get rid of them.�

�Yes, but, isn�t there a kinder way? Don�t they make humane traps? That�s such a terrible way to die.�

She insisted on having a funeral for Mickey, as she had named him. Mr. Jones protested that there was no reason to give the mouse a funeral, but she felt bad for him, and he was such a cute little mouse� Mickey was buried in the backyard alongside the grave of Sammy the goldfish.

The following day, Mr. Jones came home bearing humane mouse traps. They worked rather on the same principal as fly paper. Simply peal back the paper to reveal a sticky, sweet-smelling surface, set the trap on the floor, and the mouse would stray onto the trap and stick fast. The idea is that the mouse will slowly starve to death over a period of days, rather than experience a split second snap of the neck by the traditional mouse trap. This, apparently, is the commercial definition of �humane�. At any rate, Mrs. Jones was satisfied, and she took great care in checking the traps every morning.

One morning, Mr. Jones was again called into the kitchen by the screams of his wife. He was shocked to discover that she was not perched on the furniture, but standing over the mouse trap in the corner.

�What�s happened?� he asked.

�Oh, look at that, that�s disgusting! That�s the ugliest thing I�ve ever seen!�

Mr. Jones looked at the mouse trap and it seemed to be rather� fuzzy, but there was no mouse to be seen. Stuck to the trap were huge hunks of short grey hair so that the surface of the trap resembled a mouse-skin rug. This was not the worst part. The worst part was the two inch long pink tail that was also stuck to the trap.

�How did it do that?� asked Mrs. Jones carefully.

�It�s my guess that he managed to lay down on the trap, and then he just� rolled around until there was nothing left on him to stick to the trap.�

A few days later, a peculiar smell began developing in the kitchen. It seemed to come from the refrigerator, but after cleaning out all the food that resembled science projects, the Jones� realised that the smell was growing stronger. Finally, Mr. Jones pulled the refrigerator out from the wall. Behind the refrigerator, lying motionless on the floor was tiny pink animal. It was quickly identified as the completely hairless and tail-less mouse.

Mr. Jones called his wife so she might prepare for the funeral. This poor animal, although he got credit for his valour, was not deemed by Mrs. Jones to be cute enough to be buried in the backyard.

Mr. Jones removed all of the mouse traps, humane or otherwise. And, rather than have Mrs. Jones resume playing �Don�t Touch the Floor�, they decided to buy a cat. Let nature take its own course next time.