The Freeing of Bozo

Today I let Bozo go.
Bozo, in the way of all freed mice, scampered off in low parabolas as if the earth under his tiny feet was hot to the touch. He made his quick bouncing leaps up the slight hill and disappeared into the longer grass of the field. Another mouse added to the eco-system of the Fields.

I’d found him this morning, his fur was spiked as if he’d been using the latest in fashionable mouse hair gels. His large delicate ears, like huge radar discs on his head, seemed more suited to tracking the activities of the outer solar system than simply listening for my footfalls. His face was tiny in comparison, with dark bead-like eyes that were set in a default mode of a panicked stare. A worm-like tail completed the picture.

He was trapped in the humane mouse trap. The slight rattling sound I heard as I entered the kitchen stopped as I switched on the light, but it was too late, I’d heard him. I knew he was there and that a car journey to the Fields was about to take place.

It’s been sometime since we’ve caught a mouse in the trap. Chocolate seems to be the best bait. It’s probably the crumbs of chocolate on the floor that have lured them into the kitchen in the first place; together with the delicious smell of melting chocolate that permeates the house most weeks as we make “Chocolate Crunchies”. Our recipe, has over time, increased the proportion of chocolate over all the other ingredients. This greed has inadvertently led to our loss. The Chocolate Crunchies we now make are more friable and likely to disintegrate into tiny fragments on that perilous journey between hand and mouth. One exploded a moment ago into a myriad of tiny fragments and had to be vacuumed up. No doubt a few minuscule particles that we have missed have proved a veritable feast for any visiting rodents.

The mouse problem started before Christmas. We’ve been catching one every two or three weeks in the kitchen mousetrap. Each has had its own unique personality which they display once I reach the Fields and release them. Bozo today couldn’t wait to get out. He must have been trapped all night and from the look of his spiky hair he’d broken into quite a sweat. He was tiny, hardly more than the thought of a mouse, but he was determined, and was brave enough to try to chew on whatever plastic edges he could find. Releasing him was difficult. He had remembered the way in and was determined that that was also going to be his way out. As I gently raised the flap he was over it riding it like a perilous seesaw refusing to jump off it even as it threatened to squish him into oblivion against the roof of the trap.

I waited and tried again. Bozo, smart though he was with his streetwise punk hairdo, wasn’t going to learn. Again he rode the seesaw as if it was an extreme sport. It was the way he was getting his thrills. His philosophy seemed to be: ‘I’m doomed so I might as well have fun.’ As soon as I raised the exit instead of going under the flap he was again on top of it, riding it fuelled with mouse adrenaline as the ceiling threatened to squeeze out his life for a second time.

Other mice have had different exit strategies. One, not wanting to leave the safety of the trap, had pressed with its paws against its plastic sides, bracing itself in a fight against gravity. Even when the trap was vertical this mouse had not tumbled onto the soft grass below. Like trying to extract sauce from a sauce bottle the trap had to be gently shaken and tapped before Spider Mouse, who I’m convinced had suckers on his paws, finally slipped to freedom.

Another mouse had waited patiently for the trap door to open before sedately ambling out quite calmly and sniffing the air before springing away.

Something finally pinged in Bozo’s mind and the door was finally raised. Off he went with unerring leaps towards the thicker grass in the Fields. The grass was wet and cold perhaps that’s why he was leaping, as if each contact with the ground was a shock after the luxury of a warm floor in a centrally heated kitchen.

As I prepare to wash and disinfect the kitchen floor, I’m hoping that he won’t have a homing instinct; the Fields are a half mile away and he did bound off in the wrong direction; though perhaps we will wait awhile before we prepare the next batch of Chocolate Crunchies!