The Great Escape

What you're looking at is a photo of an empty Havahart trap lying on the floor of my car. You might be wondering why I'm driving around with an empty Havahart trap. Excellent question. The answer is that it wasn’t empty when I started my drive.

For those that don't know, a Havahart trap is a trap that allows you to catch an animal alive so that you can release it, theoretically into the wild. It's for people who have a thing against killing animals, and it’s for people who are totally repulsed by having to deal with a squished animal caught in a more “traditional” trap. I happen to fall into both of those categories.

These traps came in various sizes. This particular size is fairly small and is made to catch mice. When the weather turns cold, I set this trap down in my basement. Typically, I catch several mice at the beginning of the season (on successive nights - they don’t all pile in as a group.) Gradually, over the following weeks, the flow tapers off until all of the mice are presumably caught and relocated far, far away. This was the case again this year.

A few weeks back, Helaina asked to borrow the trap and since we had been essentially mouse-less by this point, I said, “Sure.” The other day, she returned the trap after catching just one measly mouse, (which, in the mouse catching world is referred to as “chump change”) - so I figured, what the heck, I might as well set it up again in the basement- even though I was pretty sure that all of the mice were long gone.

Over the next few days, I checked the trap. Nothing - which wasn’t surprising.

This morning though, before leaving for work, I went down the basement to throw a load of laundry in the dryer, and much to my surprise, there was a mouse in the trap. Since there had been yet another snow storm last night, I debated about what to do with the thing. It didn’t seem fair to let the thing out in the snow, but I didn’t want it to die a slow, peanut butter-less death in the trap. At least in the snow, I figured, it would have a slim (though admittedly small) chance of surviving - but I justified this to myself by noting that if I had used a more “traditional” trap, it would have had no chance at all.

So, I took the trap upstairs and put it in my car. I figured I would let the thing out somewhere along my ride to work - which is exactly what happened - though not in the way I intended.

About five minutes into my fifty-five minute drive, I turned the corner to take the ramp onto the highway - and the trap tipped over. Instantly, the mouse bolted out of the trap and disappeared somewhere on the passenger front floor. What now? It wasn’t like I was going to be able to grab the thing while I was driving - or grab it, even if I stopped.

Something all too similar to this had happened to me about ten years ago and back then, the only way I got the mouse out of the car was to park and leave the doors open, until the thing escaped on it's own. Since this could take the better part of the day, I decided that the only thing I could do at this point was to continue my drive to work and leave the doors open once I got there. With no better alternative, I continued uncomfortably on my way.

The next thirty minutes of my drive were spent glancing over at the trap and debating whether or not I should attempt to tuck my pant legs into my socks while I was driving. Since I didn’t want to have to explain to the ambulance driver why I crashed, I decided to forget the pant leg idea, and just kept glancing over at the general area of the trap.

When I was about twenty minutes away from work, I saw the mouse bolt out across the passenger side floor, under the passenger seat, to somewhere presumably behind me.

About ten minutes away from work, I looked in my rear view window, and there it was, sitting on top of one of the rear seat headrests. For the next ten minutes, it just sat there, casually looking around as I drove. In light of how the past week had been going, it made some weird kind of sense that I now found myself being a chauffeur to a mouse.

When I arrived at work, the mouse quickly hopped down and it disappeared once again below the passenger seat. I got out of the car and went to my trunk and found a package of peanut butter and cheese crackers. Gingerly (just in case the mouse was ready to attack), I reached down and picked up the trap, resetting it with the new bait, and placing it back down on the passenger side floor - this time in an upright position- and I opened up all of the car doors.

Then, I went inside, hoping that nobody would ask me why my car doors were open. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain all of this to someone at work.

After about a half an hour had passed, I went back outside and looked over at the trap. Nothing. I did a slow walk around the car. Also nothing. Then I noticed, in the fresh snow, just below one of the rear doors, there was a set of small tracks leading away from my car to the underside of one of the other vehicles. I closed all my car doors and I went back inside.

Throughout the day, I glanced outside, and once or twice, I saw the mouse dashing around the other cars out front.

At the end of the day, I gathered up my stuff and I went outside to go home. As I was about to get into my car, my boss came out to catch me before I left. He started talking to me, but as he did, he kept glancing over my shoulder at the snowbank behind me. After a few minutes of this, I asked him what he was looking at and he says, “Look at that. There’s a mouse walking around on top of that snowbank. I wonder where he came from?”