Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Eek! (02/25/10)
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TITLE: Ditzy Mitzy and the Intruder | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jackie Wilson
03/03/10 -
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She was determined not to call for help. That would be too embarrassing, having to admit she couldn’t handle it herself. Anyway, she had seen her late husband do it and it didn’t look like rocket science. She just needed to buy some of those trap-things…
The hardware store offered a wide selection of rodent elimination paraphernalia. Deciding to start with something simple, she purchased two sticky glue pads which she set out along the living room wall where the intruder made its usual nighttime run.
The next morning, nothing. Home from work, nothing. That evening, she watched as the mouse skittered right around those pads and later, when she opened the pantry, she found rice all over the shelf, pouring from a hole that had been chewed out of the corner of the bag. How dare that vile varmint violate her property!
In bed that night, she heard something gnawing in her closet. She threw her slipper in that direction and it stopped. The next day, she bought six more sticky pads.
A week passed, and all Mitzy caught was a little mouse fuzz. She threw the pads away and went back to the hardware store.
This time, she decided to go with the “tried and true” old fashioned wood and wire model. Setting the trap with cheese was more difficult than it looked, as it turned out that the trip mechanism was extremely sensitive. Nursing her sore fingers, she set eight traps.
By daybreak, that sneaky rodent had devoured every tiny crumb of cheese without springing a single trap. Another week passed.
Back to the hardware store.
She came home with ten clear plastic box traps. After baiting with bits of cracker and peanut butter, she left them out for a week. The bait gradually disappeared. The traps did, too.
A variation of the wood and wire traps came next. These contraptions had a yellow plastic square on which the bait, peanut butter with pecan pieces, was placed. The mice (for Mitzy had conceded that she now had not just one mouse, but a veritable infestation of mice!)…The mice cleaned off the twelve traps nightly. Unrelenting, she baited and waited. Another week.
Now Mitzy was a determined lady, and she realized there was only one thing left to try.
She googled.
She got 17,900,000 hits on “how to catch a mouse”. Soon, she came across an interesting idea, almost elegant in its simplicity. She decided to try it.
She took an empty paper towel roll, flattened it along one side and put a cracker with peanut butter inside one end. She set it on a middle shelf of the pantry, precariously balanced, with the baited end hanging off the shelf. A tall empty trashcan was placed underneath the protruding cylinder.
Turning out the kitchen light, Mitzy proceeded to the living room to read. Fifteen minutes later, she heard a soft thump and a rustling sound. Her head came up out of her book. It couldn’t be! She threw the book down and went to see.
Cringing, and with some stupid “girlie-fear” showing itself all of a sudden, she slowly moved closer until her head was over the trashcan. In the corner, almost hidden under the paper towel roll, was a dingy gray mouse. Mitzy let her breath out in a whoosh.
Then the mouse leaped halfway up the side of the trashcan, and Mitzy shrieked!
Holding her hand to her heart, she stood there a moment, then moved closer again. After watching a while, she saw that the mouse couldn’t possibly climb out of that trashcan, so she placed a lid on the can, carried it to the edge of the woods and dumped the mouse out.
She reset her trap and went back to her book. Ten minutes later, another thump, another mouse. Six more times in the next hour, six more mice. Then, finally, quiet.
And that’s how Ditzy Mitzy defended her home against the intruders.
She then went on to build a successful home-based business, selling an environmentally-friendly, totally “green” mouse trap, as featured in “Pest Control Monthly”.
Author’s Note: Mostly true, except for the bit about the home-based business. I wish.
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