My strangest excuse for starting work late.

Staggering bleary-eyed into my office, sitting down at my desk, wondering what fresh horrors awaited, I thought I heard a brief scratching noise from behind my desk. Probably my imagination...no, there it was again. Grabbing a flashlight, I peered down between my desk and the wall and sure enough, there was what I thought was a mouse.

Now, I have a huge desk with a printer stand beside it and a second desk at right angles. It would take the entire Mayflower company to shift them, so what to do?

Perhaps if I made the area unpleasant, the critter would come out on its own. A spritz of air freshener behind the desk did the trick. It skittered along the wall, eventually coming out from behind the desk, but I quickly saw that it only resembled a mouse in size, and it wasn't exactly acting like a mouse. It was as if it couldn't see, and had to depend on the wall for navigation.

I watched as it reached the corner of the room and cruised along the next wall toward the door. Now that I could see it more closely, I recognized the short tail and webbed feet. This was a mole.

I wasn't sure how to catch it, but I had another problem, i.e. Joan Baez or JB, my cat. She had remained offstage, awaiting her cue, and now entered stage left.

Now, JB is a mouser of some world-class talent, and ordinarily I'm fine with that even when it means removing the odd corpse here and there from the back porch. It's not always a mouse, but she figures you're probably hungry and iis eager to share with you whatever she happens to have on hand, as long as you don't mind taking pot-luck or leftovers.

I say I'm fine with that, but only so long as JB's penchant for crittercide isn't practiced in my immediate presence. I don't watch those "Wild Kingdom" TV shows where lions bring down zebras and crocodiles snack on water buffalo, and I prefer not to watch it around the house. I understand it, and I give JB pretty free rein to be her cat self, but I prefer those Greek tragedies where most of the action occurs offstage.

So, first I had to remove JB, but she wasn't having her big scene cut without throwing a diva-style fit that delayed production considerably. I almost had to send the crew to lunch, but finally managed to lock her in her dressing room.

Now, where was the mole? Not where I left it, but I knew what to do. I just followed the wall, around the door, along the adjoining wall, and found it motoring along at about 10 knots. Realizing that even after 30 years of staring at a computer screen I could still see better than the mole, I felt I had the edge. It happened that I'd purchased shoes the day before (actually, it never merely happens that I buy shoes, which is like saying that it happens that the sun comes up). The box was handy. I hid around the next corner with the box up against the wall and sure enough, here comes mole, round the bend and straight into the box. Lid slapped on, outside we go and across the street to the city park. I was really surprised how rapidly the mole buried itself in the dirt although it was softened by recent rains.

Now JB sits forlornly by the wall where she last saw the mole, muttering things under her breath that I can't repeat here (JB has a sailor somewhere in her lineage). I feel sort of bad about it. Maybe I should go get her a mouse.

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My strangest excuse for starting work late. - sm

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