Stand Off

So there's this mouse. I can't really call it "my" mouse, although I have seen it skittering around the baseboards out of the corner of my eye a couple of times. I was thinking it was living under the floor, between my floor and the ground floor ceiling. At any rate, I'm pretty much a live and let live sort of person (except for cockroaches), so I wasn't bothered by it at all.

Your basic mouse

And then, a bit ago as I was heading toward the shower, it ran right across the middle of the living room floor toward the bookcases. I stopped. It stopped. And we just sort of stood there looking at each other for a while, me wondering whether I really need to do anything about the mouse,* and the mouse -- well, who knows what the mouse was thinking?

So I moved a couple more steps toward the bathroom and the mouse pivoted to keep me in sight. And we stood there looking at each other for another couple of minutes.

And then I went and took my shower.

* I had thought of live-trapping it and taking it to South Pond and letting it go, either on the side toward the Farm in the Zoo or on the other side, where there's an extensive wild planting will all sorts of flowering plants. But it's a little late in the season for that, and I'm afraid it wouldn't have time to fatten up and dig a burrow or whatever it is that mice do in the wild. So I guess we'll stick with the status quo, at least for the time being.