October 11
We killed a mouse tonight.
Well, not we. My brother killed a mouse. Nancy and I were huddled on my bed. My brother, Ruben, and nephew, Bryan, were running around my room like banshees. The mouse was hiding under my commode. There were towels tucked under the door so it couldn’t escape and rubber boots were laid strategically around the floor. Another of my sisters kept trying to come in, but Bryan became the door-guard so she couldn’t move the towel by opening the door and possibly give the rodent a chance to escape.
Now, I’m really not afraid of mice. I had two as pets when I was little. They’re cute… when they’re a pet or outside. Not when they are scurrying around my room. Not when it was in my underwear drawer this morning, and not when I saw it jump under my bed from my pillow when I turned on the light just minutes before its death.
For a while, the boys couldn’t find it under the commode. I almost told them not to worry about it, but the thought of it crawling in next to me for warmth tonight was enough to keep my mouth shut. Plus, they were having a ball yelling instructions to each other and jumping around when they finally found it. I wasn’t expecting them to kill it, and I thought of my Guses (both of my mice were named Gus, from Cinderella, and I was like 4, so I thought all mice should be named Gus) when Ruben finally turned with a giant smile on his face, holding the dead mouse by the tail and walked out of the house triumphantly.
