I was at the Agway with my dad and brother, and there were these little tiny have-a-heart traps for sale. They were right next to the big have-a-heart traps that looked like the one we used for catching groundhogs. Our have-a-heart trap didn’t hurt the groundhogs, just caught them long enough to drive to Pennsylvania and let them go by the train tracks, where they could thrive without eating our garden. We must have re-located 10 groundhogs a summer with our big have-a-heart trap, resulting in a refugee ground hog depot of sorts, a thriving community of tunnelers on the banks of the Delaware river.
So, when I saw the tiny have-a-heart trap designed for mice, I envisioned creating my own mouse community, catching a bunch of mice in my tiny have-a-heart trap, and relocating them to the playground behind the school. How nice would it be to visit my mouse friends at recess? I could feed them, and watch them, and see them be happy. It would make going to school a bit less depressing.
I saved my allowance for three weeks and came up with the $2.75 to buy the tiny have-a-heart trap next time we went to the Agway. The trap was a so cute - grey plastic with yellow writing and tiny yellow trap doors connected to a tiny yellow bait tray. When we got home, I found some cheese, and I set the trap in our neighbor’s shed - a place I believed would have a ton of mice to catch. I checked that trap in an hour. No mouse. I checked that trap the next day. No mouse. I checked again and again day after day, and still no mouse. I checked so many times that I began to forget if I checked or not. And then I simply began to forget checking. The last time I checked the trap, it was a brutally hot day. The shed smelled like death. There was no happy mouse friend in my trap, just a corpse - a sort of mouse raisin - shriveled and stinking. I buried the trap with my furry victim inside, feeling terrible that such a lovely creature had died a slow and heartless death because of my forgetfulness.