Second Suspensful Chapter of: A Mouse's Tale!

Continued from the first post of
A Mouse's Tale - the thrilling narrative of one mouse's journey through a human's domain; as told by the mouse.

https://steemit.com/funny/@lenadr/ninja-mice-the-thrilling-conclusion

Chapter 3: Deterrent

He’s been

living in luxury for the better part of his life now – about 10 months – and he’s been noticing the human making more and more angry noises. Every night his paths are wiped clean and his poop is gone, and now the kitchen is barren of free food.

The bread is in the refrigerator (which he considered sneaking into but decided against), the dog biscuits are in plastic containers which are impervious to gnawing, and the bags of dog and cat food are kept in large plastic (damn the plastic!) tubs. Even the pantry is in lockdown.

Everything edible has been either secreted away or sealed in impenetrable containers. He tried to nibble on a tea bag once, but that was disgusting.

One night,

as he awakes to start another long hunt for food, a terrible smell almost sends him running. Peppermint. What can be worse than peppermint, and how the hell did it get into the house?

He finds large, foul blocks of the stuff sitting smack in the middle of almost all his trails. The closer he gets, the worse it is. His eyes burn, his nose starts leaking; he almost can’t sleep because the smell is seeping into his nest.

But he refuses to give up his safe and reliable territory. Is he a man or a mouse? He’s a mouse, dammit, and he will overcome! He forges new trails and avoids the peppermint land mines as much as possible.

And wouldn’t you know it, in a few days, the smell starts to fade away. In a couple of weeks, it’s gone completely.

Then come

the sacks of balsam fir. Again, in the beginning the smell is overwhelming and disheartening. The human’s attack is stronger this time. Balsam is definitely harsher than peppermint; it lingers forever and seems to creep through the air with a purpose.

But the human put the sacks on the old trails – the same ones the now useless peppermint bombs are on. Those have been abandoned for so long now, he doesn’t even think about them as viable paths anymore. And although the balsam smell is much more pervasive, he has already learned ways to avoid the negative effects of peppermint and puts those into practice again.

In fact, he’s getting quite good at stealth evasion tactics. One might almost call him a Ninja Mouse. And once again, after a while, the smell fades. To show his distain at the human’s feeble attempts to run him off, he poops all around and even on the now diffused bombs.

Suddenly,

after another few months, a new and dangerous smell hits his nose. Fox. He knows that smell from his old life, the same as he knows cats. Foxes are definitely bad news. They’re loud, they’re rude, and they eat mice.

And now there seems to be fox-scented sand sprinkled along every wall, in every corner, and on every surface he frequents. How can this fox be everywhere at once? It defies logic and is utterly horrifying.

Waaait a second… This doesn’t have the potency of fresh fox; there are other things mixed in with it, strange unidentifiable things that have nothing to do with foxes or any scent they leave behind.

Ha! This one didn’t even take a week to figure out, the ruse was so flimsy. Come to think of it, he’s seen the human shaking this sand-stuff out of a plastic bottle, gagging and cursing and making stupid faces. How is it that humans have survived for so long on this planet? They’re just so painfully stupid.

Chapter Four: The Trap

By now,

the mouse feels invincible. He makes as much noise as he wants and none of the other animals come to investigate. He lets his poop drop where it may and snickers as the human is forced to clean it up every day. No one can run him out of his territory. No one.

And then,

one night, he discovers a box sitting on the otherwise empty kitchen counter. It smells delicious. But as cruel fate would have it, the box is plastic and whatever the food-smell is, it’s coming from inside.

Creeping around the box, the mouse finds an opening where the smell is literally pouring from. He sniffs, leans in, sniffs, and then steps back. Something’s not right. For the better part of an hour he circles the box, leaving many nervous poops along the way, and trying to find other ways of getting at the food without having to go through the ominous little opening.

He goes back to his nest that night pondering his options.

For the

next week he explores the box. (A few days back another one magically appeared in the laundry room, right next to the dog biscuits he’d been trying to get at.) He now spends most of the nights agonizing over the food that he just can’t reach, pooping liberally to express his frustration.

But while he’s been so focused on the boxes, he hasn’t eaten. The human long ago ferreted out each of his caches of dog food, and for about six months now he’s been living strictly paw-to-mouth. The time has come to take a risk.

The very

next night he peeks his head into the hole, deeply inhaling the heavenly scents of stale bread and old dog food. He takes a few tentative steps in, his little nose twitching like crazy.

Nothing happens. A few more steps. The smell is getting overwhelming. Finally he reaches the back of the box and surveys his feast.

And then the floor he was standing on slams up to the ceiling, blocking the exit. Suddenly, the mouse is trapped in a small corridor of unforgiving plastic.

All thoughts of food vanish and he wriggles around furiously attempting to escape. But he only ends up getting himself even more stuck. Now his head is pressed up against where the exit should be, and his butt is out toward the food. That damn food.

Slowly he settles down, realizing that he can’t even move, let alone escape. Everything is dark and silent around him, and soon he poops and falls asleep.

What happens to our poor little mouse? Will he be rescued? Will he escape? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to A Mouse's Tale!