I've Gone and Done It
There's no turning back now. No more playing around with the mouse and that stupid trap-less trap.

I've brought in mouse poison, and it now awaits him in his corner. Unless he is smart enough to read that the outside of the packet says 'Mouse Killer' really, really big, it's only a matter of time until he eats the poison and dies.

And strangely, I feel really bad right now. Guilty. I'm not a good person.

The package says it, really, really big: MOUSE KILLER.

I'm a MOUSE KILLER.

I've never killed anything larger than a large bug (technically I did not kill the squirrel or the bird- they died on their own or with the help of an evil cat). Can I handle being responsible for taking the life of a mammal, albeit a small, disgusting rodent?

True, I hate that mouse. I want him GONE. AWAY FROM ME. OUT OF MY OFFICE. I don't want to see, hear, touch, or be near him ever again. He has tortured me for nigh on a week now. He even stole an M&M. That is completely outside of the boundaries of battle.

He deserves to die. To avenge the death of the M.

But does he really?? I mean, he's definitely given me a lot to write about this week, albeit the writing was my coping mechanism for dealing with the terror of a mouse running rampant across my desk at random. And true, he carries at least 108 diseases and is just completely gross and icky and mouse-y.

But can I live with knowing I killed him? That we had this back-and-forth thing going, one challenge extended to the other, and suddenly I got deadly serious about it, instead of just playing around? Was I only playing around before? I mean, we did name him: Algernon the Office Mouse. Do I need to warn him that I've upped the stakes? Does he think he's my friend? That I'm feeding him crackers and candy because I like him?

Eh, we'll see if he outsmarts the poison. If he does, THEN it is definitely ON......

C.T.