Flashes of Panic

Iz caught another mouse tonight. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he likes playing with them more than he likes killing them, so we managed to round it up in a wastebasket and release it outdoors, as we have with his three bats.

I don’t know where he found it; he was just watching something intently in the hall shadows, so I asked, “What do you have, Iz?” And then one of the shadows broke left, and he rounded it up with a paw. No claws out, I noticed, though the mouse squeaked whenever he brushed it. For a few minutes there was a standoff under a bureau, with the mouse cornered against the wall but the furniture keeping Iz from getting a paw on it. Eventually the mouse went up on the baseboards and managed an end run, but eventually he ended up in my wastebasket.

Unlike the last one, Iz never pinned this one down long enough to get a bite, which may have something to do with its survival for outdoor release. It’s supposed to get pretty cold tonight, though, so I wonder if I really did the little guy any favors. And Iz, of course, is once again disappointed that I swiped another great toy without even getting a trophy photo.