A Wild Animal Loose In The House [FICTOID]

“Get a bucket!  Get a bucket!”

“Why?  Is there a leak?”

“No!  There’s a mouse in the house!  It just ran over my ankle!”

“Well, what good will a bucket do?”

“You can trap it under the bucket!”

“And then what?”

“This isn’t a democracy!  Get a bucket!”

“All right, but I think statistics might prove -- “

“I don’t care what statistics prove!  Get a bucket!”

“Okay, do you want the green one with the Paul Bunyan logo or the orange one?”

“I don’t care!  It doesn’t matter!”

“The Paul Bunyan bucket it is, then.”

Meanwhile the terrified rodent scampered wildly through the house, looking for a way to escape and rejoin the rodent community.

“Hurry! It might be pregnant!”

“In that case, I think ‘she’ would be the proper pronoun.”

“Will you shut up and drop the bucket over it?”

“I will -- as soon as I can find it…or her, as the case may be.”

“I swear!  You’re downright criminal when it comes to us!  I can’t wait to see you in prison orange.”

“That’s a cruel comment to make.”

“Will you trap that mouse?”

The man scoured the living room.  No mouse.  He checked the bedrooms and the kitchen:  No mouse.  He checked all the places a mouse could be:  Nothing.

“Are you sure you saw a reptile -- I mean ‘mouse’.  I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking of turning your horse lose to do the dirty work and you survive on the effort.”

“That’s crazy talk -- quite literally.”

“Thank you for your honesty.  Now shut up and help me find the mouse.”

“Whatever you say,” said the man, scanning the room.  He almost missed seeing the mouse out of the corner of his eye.  “Gotcha!” he yelled, slamming the bucket down.

“Do you have him?”

“I do!  Now you get a shovel so we can take care of this little guy.”

The woman brought a shovel.  They slid it carefully under the lip of the overturned bucket, trapping the mouse inside, then even more carefully took it outside and released it into the wild.

The couple -- and the mouse -- felt relieved.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over with,” she said.

“Me, too.  Now let’s do something about the elephant in the room.”

© Buzz Dixon