Bacon Wins Again

My twenty pounds of housecat figured out how to open the sliding screen on my back door many years ago.  He rather nudges it open with his nose.  Early yesterday morning, I opened the glass door and let him out into the deep blue of predawn.

Less the five minutes later, I happened to be in the kitchen when I heard the cat nudging at the screen.  Curious, I stepped around the peninsula counter between me and the door.  “Why are you coming back in?” I asked.  “I just let you out.”

As soon as I finished saying this, I saw the mouse in his mouth.

I tried to flag the cat to a stop right there.  I approached him cautiously—hoping I might usher him right back out the door.

No soap on that.

The cat dropped the mouse on the floor.  The mouse shot off to hide under the bulky leg structure of my dining table.   The cat followed.

For the next few minutes, the three of us—cat, mouse, and Mitch—chased each other around the dining room.  The mouse eventually found a hiding place up inside the hydronic heat register near the back door.

We all reached a stalemate there at the register.    

My friend Tad insists that bacon is the duct tape of food.  You can use it to fix anything.  This came to mind as I the cat and I stared in frustration at the register.

I have a small live trap for catching mice.  I grabbed the trap, dropped a few bacon crumbles inside, and set it on the floor directly in front of where the mouse vanished.

Bacon is force.

After no more than five minutes, the mouse entered the trap and caught himself.  I quickly carried the trap outside and flicked the door open out in the tall grass outside.   The mouse melted into the grass.

I try to always have a bag of bacon crumbles on hand. 

Dust tape, too.

—Mitchell Hegman