zombie mice

It’s as dreary a day as I could ever hope for here at the farm. It’s just warm enough to rain, with fog that looks likely to yield Frankensteinesque monsters at any moment: the perfect time to sit by the woodstove and read, with the dogs next to me, sleeping yet ready to protect me.

But I needn’t bother conjuring up any of my deepest fears. Our house has zombie mice. Let me explain. Jude made a mouse trap out of a five-gallon bucket with a large can at the top. The can has a metal rod through the top and bottom of it. She smeared peanut butter around the centre of the can and put a small board reaching from a bench next to the bucket to the can. When a mouse walks across the board to eat the peanut butter, it steps on the can, which spins and sends the mouse to his or her doom in six or so inches of water.

A few weeks ago, Jude told me that we had another rodent cadaver to dispose of. Before I could clear my busy schedule of watching countless sporting events, we had a hard freeze, leaving the mouse solidly in place. “He or she can wait,” I thought, to no one in particular. A few days later, a second mouse fell in but didn’t drown due to the ice. “He or she can also wait,” I thought, because Alabama was playing Ole Miss in a pivotal SEC showdown. After I calmed down from the excitement of that game, I checked the bucket to discover that the live mouse had eaten the brain of the dead one.

Stunned, I had to watch the Kansas City Chiefs – Los Angeles Chargers game before checking the bucket again. It had two new mice, both alive and one or both of whom had eaten the brain of the mouse (now dead) who had eaten the first mouse’s brain. You can imagine my incredulity.

I took the bucket down to the creek and dumped it. The two live mice scurried off in different directions. I tossed the two dead ones on the roof of a shed where I throw other corpses for the ravens. Still shaken, I hurried back in from the rain to check when the next football game would be televised.