Thursday, July 15, 2004

"Mickey Learns A Lesson"

So outside of Gavin and Mickey’s bedroom window is a tree. It is one of those trees that drop those little orange (Kumquat) inedible fruits. The tree is wedged between their house and the neighbor’s house, and there isn’t a lot of access.

Well, as happens when fruit drops the ground and rots, the area is now frequented by “visitors” (read vermin). So Mickey and Gavin have a problem. Rats.

How best to handle rats. Well the best way is to put a Fox Terrier in there and let Hastings kill them left and right, but Mickey and Gavin do not have a For Terrier. So they went to buy traps.

Traps come in two forms. The one we all know and love from Tom and Jerry – where the steels spring launches firepower quickly breaking the rat’s neck (which by the by is how the Fox Terrier kills a rat). Or the less unpleasant one where the rats gets stuck on the paper.

Mickey has a big heart, so he chooses the sticky paper. And they lay down sleep.

An hour later, Gavin, snores softly (“softly” being a relative term) when Mickey hears the little pitter patter pitter pat.. of a rat stuck in the paper. Mickey sighs to himself, “it is working.”

Gavin snores, Mickey listens, and the rat FREAKS OUT. The rat squeals and shrieks and jumps around. Mickey is now listening a rat nightmare, and he can’t stop it. And Gavin won’t wake up. “Does Gavin not hear it?” Mickey must wonder.

Someone hears it. A cat. Nothing brings a cat quicker than a rat in agony. So now Mickey gets to listen to a rat, freaking out, being eaten by a cat. There is much snarling, squealing and hissing, but really the odds have to go to the cat over the rat whose feet are stuck to sticky paper. So, after Mickey listens to the fight for minutes, he hears the crunch as the cat begins his snackums.

It is disgusting, but – Mickey thinks – at least it is almost over. Then the puddy tat steps on the sticky paper herself. The noise of the cat/rat fight is nothing compared to the cat FREAKING OUT. Jumping pounding herself against the wall, screaming.

Now you or I might turn to our lover and laugh. Unless your lover is Gavin, who has proceed to snore through all of this. Mickey spent most of the night wide awake, waiting for this to all happen again.

In the morning, he quickly went out to remove the sticky paper. Even the one with the half eaten rat on it.