Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

The last three nights I've caught a mouse in the live trap I use. Each of those times, it happened at midnight or later while The Gryphon and I were watching episodes from season three of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The first mouse was the largest I've seen, and it had a roly-poly tummy. It kept spinning around and sitting on the peanut butter cracker while we carried it out. The second one was more normal sized, and last night's was absolutely teeny.

The Gryphon commented, "Well, they're getting smaller."

Normally, I would take a little drive and leave the mousie in a wilder area, but when they show up at midnight and let's say I've had a Bacardi Ice or two, I'm not driving them anywhere.

So we came up with another plan. A couple blocks away there's several abandoned buildings, with a big, overgrown lot. I figured this site has potential for a mousie looking for shelter and for things to eat. So we've been dropping them off there, leaving behind, of course, the peanut butter cracker just to get them started.

The first two nights, The Gryphon was already wearing pajamas and had to change to accompany me. The third night, he waited until after the mouse ritual before changing.

Each time I took with me my pepper spray, my finger on the button, ready just in case it would be needed. But we only passed one guy on all three nights, and he looked more scared of us than we were of him.

Even though it was a day apart, I figured that maybe releasing them all in the same place gives them a chance to connect up again, if they care about that sort of thing.

The funny thing is that, in the Buffy episode we were watching last night, someone gets turned into a rat. Maybe that's why they were so interested in it. Either that or midnight is the mousing hour of night.

When I'm not relocating mice, lately I've been working on a new poetry collection, to be called As Truth to Water. This collection includes some more recent poetry as well as some stuff dating back to grad school. My goal is to complete it in time to submit it to a contest, the winner of which gets published by Houghton Mifflin. So that would be a pretty big deal, if I won, but I won't get the results until May of next year.

I'll also be entering my first book, Picturebook of the Martyrs in a self-published book contest, the winner of which earns $3,000 and free promotion for the book.

I had been waiting to send out more copies of Picturebook for review until I purchased some ISBN numbers, but it simply isn't practical. You have to buy them in groups of 10, and the processing fees and costs add up to over $200. When you think about it, the only benefit would be making it easier to sell in certain distribution channels. But since I'm selling it as a print on demand book and an e-book, it doesn't get me anything but $220 further in the red.

You know how you get songs stuck in your head? I get lines from comedy sketches. Ever since I started writing about mice today, I've been thinking about the Monty Python sketch that includes a firm with the very silly name Mousebat, Follicle, Goosecreature, Ampersand, Vendetta and Prang. Which I suppose is as good a way to end today's entry as any.

Copyright 2004 by Alyce Wilson

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