Margaret, Mike, and The Mousetraps

…………Several years ago, I was the assistant manager of a liquor store. It was called Queen City Liquors and it was a really nice place to work. The owner and manager was Margaret, a very cool older woman who had won the store in a divorce, like, 20 years previously.
…………Obviously, we sold alcohol of all kinds, but also alcohol paraphernalia, like shot glasses, wine glasses, styrofoam coolers, beer coozies, shakers, and so on. We also sold some snacks like chips and sunflower seeds and candy bars.
…………This is where the mice come in.
…………The store opened at 10 am and Margaret worked the first shift every day, seven days a week. She won the business in a divorce and it became her new husband, her new family, her whole life. It may sound sad, but she wasn’t a sad person. She loved her store and was very happy with her life. This was one of the reasons she was so cool. Miserable people annoy me and I generally avoid them. Happy people are where it’s at, socially.
…………Word to the wise.
…………Anyway, she got to the store about 9:30 and worked till 5 pm, which is when I came in. I closed the store down five days a week, getting out of there about 12:30 am. The other two days a week, we had a college student close down.
…………So I get to work about ten to five one day and Margaret is up in arms. Her store has mice! They gnawed through a Doritos bag! She found turds in her office!
…………I noticed a little stool behind the counter which wasn’t usually there. “In case I see one and have to get off the floor,” Margaret explained. She went on to tell me that she was “absolutely terrified” of mice.
…………This is called musophobia—the irrational fear of mice. I realized Margaret had a severe case.
…………“Oh, Mike, will you take care of it for me?” There was both fear and pleading in her eyes. “I don’t even know how to set a mousetrap and there’s no way I could ever touch a dead one. I don’t even want to look at one.”
…………I felt so sorry for her. “Sure, Margaret. No problem.”
…………Off she went to grab some bait and traps downtown.
…………But there was a problem—a big problem. You see, I don’t kill anything. Ever. I’m ‘dead’ serious—ha, ha. At my house, I even catch flies with a paper cup and release them outside—fucking FLIES. There’s no way I could kill a mouse if I can’t even hurt a fly.
…………So, yeah. At the time I didn’t think of humane traps. Margaret wouldn’t have been down with the idea anyway. First off all, she’s a hard-headed (and pretty successful, I might add) businesswoman. It would be illogical in her mind to spend more on humane traps when regular mousetraps are so cheap and work just as well. Second, though she feared mice, she also fucking hated them. Death was a reasonable penalty for invading her store. In fact, it was probably too good for them.
…………She was back inside a half an hour with two standard traps, some peanut butter, and a little wedge of brie.
…………Yes, I was thinking the same thing you are now: brie?
…………I told you she was a successful businesswoman.
…………So Margaret went home and I was left with a moral dilemma. I wanted to please my boss, whom I respected and cared about, but at the same time I didn’t want to cause the death of another living creature to do it.
…………I went ahead and baited the traps, but didn’t set them. I put one under the snack stand and one in the office next to the tell-tale turds. I didn’t know what else to do.
…………By the way, I didn’t use the brie. I ate that myself.
…………“We have smart mice,” Margaret told me when I came in the next day.
…………“Oh, yeah?” I said.
…………“Yep. They got the bait and got away. Both traps were sprung this morning.”
.………..“Probably defective traps,” I said. I picked the one up that was under the snack stand. The peanut butter I had applied the night before as bait was completely gone. I flipped the trap over and pretended to look at the bottom. “I knew it,” I said. “These are American made. They’re crap. You should have gotten Japanese traps.”
…………I looked at her and shook my head disapprovingly. My eyes said to her: You, Margaret, and you alone, are the reason we still have mice. Jesus.
…………“Japanese traps?” she asked.
…………“Yeah, the Masaharu Morimoto 5000 is the best mousetrap on the market. It would’ve been worth the extra expense.”
…………“Where do I get some? Wal*Mart?”
…………“You’re in luck. It just so happens that I have two in my car. I’ll run get them.”
…………She laughed as I was going out the door. “Really? Do you sell them on the side or something?”
…………“No, I just had a feeling the traps you got wouldn’t work so I picked some up before I came in.”
…………“Great,” said Margaret. “Bring the receipt and I’ll reimburse you from the till.”
…………Of course, they weren’t Masaharu Morimoto 5000 mousetraps. There’s no such thing, tragically. They were standard humane traps. The mouse goes in to get the bait, trips the door, and is trapped inside. He’s confused, he’s frightened, but he’s alive. Later on, you release him outside or in the government building of your choice.
…………They weren’t Japanese made either. Japan is too smart of a country to squander its production power on mousetrap manufacturing. They got important shit to build. No, they were made in China, like everything else in the U.S.
…………Well, it took two days but we finally caught one mouse—and one mouse only. Perhaps he was the vanguard, the scouting party of a much larger mouse invasion force that would’ve come had the political leadership of the liquor store not acted so quickly. Who knows?
…………After the little guy was incarcerated in the trap, I took him home and released him in my yard, since there was nothing but parking spaces and traffic around the store. The next day, my cat dropped his lifeless corpse at my feet.