The Better Mouse Trap

Lately I've realized I have a mouse problem in my house. Oddly enough, real mice are not as cute as they seem in nursery rhymes. I have two traps for them, and so far I've caught a mouse a day (does that have the same effect as an apple a day?). Luckily for me, Indy has been willing to help.

Each morning we have a ritual: I check the traps, usually find a long, rigid tail sticking out above two petrified little feet, and I pick up the trap and head outside to release the carcass. Indy follows, more than willing to help me find a good dumping spot. The trick is, I have to throw the mouse over our fence far enough that Indy can't retrieve it and adopt it as her new toy -- like any healthy dog, she has quite the taste for the delicacy of rodent carcass (and bird carcass and fish carcass and...you get the picture).

On Monday of this week, I failed. I threw the mouse over the fence and headed back inside, quickly realizing Indy was not with me. I looked back just in time to catch Indy rooting her nose under the fence just far enough to snatch the tail and rescue the dead rodent. She then pranced around the yard with the limp body in her mouth, looking at me as if to say, "Mom, look at my new bitch!" Then she broke into a run -- a zoom, actually -- in repeated ovals around the tree in the center of the yard, stopping only briefly to give the mouse a good wrenching back and forth. Eventually she gently dropped the dead body in the hole she's been digging in the yard, preparing to give it a proper burial (and not, I'm sure, planning to dig it up again later), at which point I ran over to that spot and guarded the mouse while yelling at Indy to stay away. This upset her greatly, and she barked back at me like any good teenager.

Then I realized the difficulty of my new mission: somehow guard the mouse from Indy, while simultaneously corralling Indy back into the house and discovering a way of picking the mouse up and throwing it back over the fence without touching it. In the end I used two sticks to pick up the carcass chop-stick style (which was difficult, as I can't even use real chop sticks), chased Indy back into the house, and shut the door so she couldn't see the mouse's final resting place (far into the woods on the other side of our fence).

Looking forward to tomorrow morning.