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Of mice and real men

From June 2006 St. Thomas Super Shopper

Scratching in the bedroom wall. It went away. Nothing for a few days.
Gnawing in the middle of the night. It stopped for a while. More midnight scratching and gnawing sounds.
This continued through late winter.
Too loud and aggressive for a mouse, we said. Probably a rat.
We like to view ourselves as typical St. Thomas people. We get along with our neighbours, man and beast. We’re regular church goers. If asked, we buy Girl Guide cookies. Tolerant folk.
We have no tolerance for rodents.
In my own case, this started as a child in a large corn bin. Mice had discovered this yellow corn-ucopia. In a parody of Hickory Dickory Dock, one mouse ran up my pants. Inside. When it reached the knee, it could go no further. So it scurried down.
This was the source of a phobia, rather than a fear. Real men do not fear rodents.
Around Easter, I made my way to the attic with its pink, blown-in insulation. I laid down a plywood path from the wall nearest where I’d heard him to the trap-door accessing the attic. And I set a rat trap baited with peanut butter.
The next day the trap was sprung, but it was a victimless crime.
Aha, I thought. A smaller rodent. I set both mouse and rat trap side-by-side, each baited with peanut butter.
The next day when I shoved up the door to the attic, there, lying on his back, dead as a door nail, little paws curled skyward, black eyes sightless, bushy tail and all, was a brown squirrel.
A good twelve inches away, 30 cm. on the metric scale, was the sprung rat trap.
Now that was one fast squirrel.
My guess is the poor guy had a genetic heart condition, made worse by a winter of indoor inactivity. And a fondness for peanut butter.