Originally posted 03.09.2004

I used to work in a warehouse sewing futon covers. The warehouse was part of a collection of small business and light industrial spaces in a converted bus depot (which contained the woodshop where I'd apprenticed, the newspaper where I'd reported, and the coffee roaster where my brother stirred beans).

Apparently, we had a mouse problem, and the exterminator would come by once a month to check the humane traps. They were always empty. I asked him what he would do with mice if he ever found one and he assured me, with a sarcastic sneer, that they would be released into mousey paradise.

One evening, when everyone else was gone and I was tying up some loose threads, I came across a tiny mouse sitting up on its haunches between some bolts of material, a few feet away from the trap, of which it seemed oblivious. We both froze, and I watched its little sides expand and deflate with a rapid patter of breath. Eventually the mouse gathered its wits and beelined the hell away from me. I never saw it again.