The wildlife that Margie has zero tolerance for is rodents.  She even tolerates obnoxious cats that prevent graceful exits from the house and which insist upon walking exactly where her next foot will be placed.  They are tolerable only because their favorite food is intolerable.  Mice in the house and gophers in the garden work a marvelous transformation on Margie's calm, placid demeanor.  For this reason her husband goes all out to catch any mouse whose presence in the house is detected.

One October night I was awakened twice by someone in the kitchen.  The second time I was awakened I got up to see who was having trouble sleeping.  Finding no one there, I stood and listened, and realized that we had a very active mouse in the pantry.  I set a trap.

As I got back in bed the mouse made the lid to a pot clatter.  Margie came awake at that and asked, "Who's that?"

"No one," I answered, "just our mouse."

"A mouse!" she exclaimed incredulously.  "Slinging dishes!?"

She paused and listened to yet another clatter.

"That sounds more like a timber rat to me.  I'm not going out there!"

This struck me as extremely funny.  I laughed and giggled for several minutes.  Nothing is so funny as some dumb thing in the middle of the night.  I resolved to catch the creature.

I was disappointed in the morning to find my trap empty.  But Matt had heard the mouse rattling in the wall where the sliding pantry door disappears.  Knowing where the mouse was, I knew where to set my trap.  It was just a matter of time before I had it.

In the afternoon I came home.  I was met in the middle of the living room by a very distraught wife.  She had seen the mouse.  A broom was in her hand.  She had been standing guard with it at the closed pantry door to make sure it didn't come under the door and into the kitchen.

"It's this long," she said, and indicated a seven-inch space between her fingers.  "Without the tail!"

I laughed.

"It's white and had big round ears.  It was teetering on the pots and pans."

I laughed harder.

"Your trap isn't going to catch that mouse.  I was down on my hands and knees looking under the door at it.  It was looking right back at me."

She shuddered and looked desperate.

I knew that I had to get this mouse.  It and my wife could not co-exist in the house.

Though I had laughed at her theatrics and exaggerations, I decided that perhaps I'd better take other measures to make sure I captured the fugitive.  It had already sprung the trap once.  I needed a backup system.

I found a bucket and propped one side up with a three-inch stick.  I tied a thread to the top of the stick.  The other end of the thread I tied to the bail of the mousetrap under the bucket.  When the mouse nibbled the bread on the trap, the trap would spring, the thread would jerk the prop, the bucket would drop, and I'd either have the mouse in the trap or at least have it trapped under the bucket.

All night I worked and worried trying to catch that mouse.  I found the bucket dropped down once, but nothing was inside.  The trap hadn't been sprung.  I readjusted things and got them set just so.

I did my chores at 4:30 so that I could be ready early to leave for a meeting.  When I came back in from the chores and was getting ready, I could hear the mouse under the bucket.  I had him!

I slipped a cookie sheet under the bucket, turned the whole thing right side up, and carried it out into the middle of the driveway.  Margie would be so proud of me, and I'd have such a good laugh at her when I told her about the plain, ordinary mouse that I had running around the inside of my bucket.

I called our dog, Annie, and poised her by the bucket.  I'd remove the cookie sheet, Annie would dive her head into the bucket, and that would be that.  It would be all over except for the ribbing I'd give Margie.

Now!  I removed the cookie sheet.  Neither Annie nor I was prepared for what we saw.  Staring up at us was a gigantic rat.  It was fully seven inches long, without the tail, maybe more.  It hesitated perhaps half a second and barreled out of the bucket.  It had the jump on Annie.  She was momentarily stunned.  It skittered through the fence toward the pond and eluded Annie.  By the time Annie made it around the fence, the rat had disappeared.  She and I were both disappointed.  But at least it was gone.  Now Margie wouldn't have to move out.

That could have made a somewhat disappointing yet happy ending to the story, but the next night I was again awakened by noises in the kitchen.  I was instantly wide awake.

It couldn't be the rat!  There was no way for it to get in.  Had there been two of them?

I silently crept out of bed and stood staring into the darkness of the kitchen.  Something was there.  I flipped on the light.  The surprised rat was on the counter.  It made a flying leap to the seats of the dining room chairs which were neatly lined up under the table and seemingly disappeared into thin air.

The battle was on.  I marched off to assemble my arsenal.  As I passed my bedroom door I noticed it was tightly shut.  Inside I found a very wide-eyed wife sitting in the middle of her bed begging me to keep the door shut.

Every mousetrap that could be located was pressed into service.  If I had caught the rat once, I could do it again.  A bucket for each trap was set on the counters.  I set a long line of rat traps similar to the one that had originally caught the intruder.

Taking note that the rat had been nibbling on the tomatoes in the pantry, I cut one up and baited some of the traps with it.  Other traps were baited with bread.  When all was ready I turned out the lights, got back in bed, and waited with baited breath.

Throughout the interminable night I endured the thumpings and rattlings of the rat in the kitchen.  I was waiting for the telltale "whoomp" of a bucket dropping before I'd rush to the kitchen.

The buckets never dropped.  Morning came.  The rat had been captured by the bucket trick once, and was not going to fall for it again.

The only solution to the problem that I could see was to shoot the rat.  Margie vetoed that idea.  The only solution she could see was to poison the rat.  I vetoed that idea.

"It would die in the wall somewhere and we'd have to endure two months of dead rat smell," I argued.

"Well, I'm not going to have a filthy rat running all over my counters every night," she said emphatically.  "Put some poison up in the attic."

"The rat can't get up in the attic.  It's here in the house.  I've looked everywhere for an opening, and there just isn't one."

"Then set your traps again, but put some poison in the attic just in case."

I obeyed.

That night a bucket dropped.  Grabbing my bathrobe, I gleefully leaped out of bed and completed the capture by slipping the cookie sheet under the bucket.  The rat was in there, all right.  I could hear it.  This time I'd make no mistakes.  This time I wouldn't risk letting the rat escape.  This time I'd drown it.

Taking the bucket to the pond, I carefully slid the cookie sheet over the opening of the bucket until a tiny hole was made between the cookie sheet and the lip of the bucket.  Submerging the bucket in the pond, water flowed in and air bubbled out.

In my mind's eye, I could see the rat standing in water and desperately looking for a way out.  The water level rose.  The rat was swimming, frantically trying to escape.  But I was remorseless.  It was payback time for the nights of missed sleep.

Finally the bubbles stopped.  The bucket was full.  Closing the hole, I carried the heavy bucket containing the drowning rat back to the driveway.  Setting it down, I piled heavy weights on top.  Now I could go to bed and sleep in peace.  In the morning I would show Margie her trophy mouse.

When we awoke, I happily announced to my joyful wife that I had caught and drowned the rat.  "Come see," I said.

I led her to the bucket in the driveway.  She stood back warily as I began removing the heavy weights.  Last of all I confidently lifted the cookie sheet.  Floating on the top of the water was the mousetrap and prop.  Peering through the water to the bottom of the bucket our eyes finally located the dead body of a drowned mouse.  A tiny mouse!  The rat was still at large.

It was a hugely disappointing moment.  The next few days were also disappointing as the traps were all unsprung each morning.  But the rat was never heard again.  The household gradually relaxed as the realization dawned that the poison in the attic had accomplished what my traps hadn't.