I got our mouse. In a glue-trap on the basement landing. I shined my cellphone and it tried to free itself by undulating like this dancer we saw on Make America Fun Again who kind of wormed his way across the stage. Not that this mouse was going to win third-place. It’d excreted all there was to excrete, and I thought, in order to escape, it would have emptied its soul.
I felt kind of bad.
A patch of fur in the glue looked like an aureola, and I wondered if my wife would see Jesus’ face, like she had that time in the soap bubbles.
The body parts were still in tact. I’ve read that mice chew off their legs — sometimes even their tongues — in order to flee into the walls to their friends.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I texted June (she was still sleeping): Got our mouse! and left for work.
At a stoplight I texted again: Leave it.
I told my students. It seemed like a nice icebreaker — the community college adjunct, that they think is a professor, caring what they think.
They said, “Smash it,” and I said, “I can’t smash it,” and they said, “I’ll smash it.”
I thought maybe when I got home the mouse would be dead, but of course it wasn’t dead. It writhed at my nudge.
I texted June (volunteering at the crisis pregnancy center): Still ALIVE! and went upstairs to nap, hoping the mouse would die in my sleep.
I couldn’t sleep of course, so I checked my phone for Facebook likes.
There was a text from June: Kill it!
She was right. End the misery.
I creaked to the fireplace and grabbed the tongs — the really long tongs — to retrieve the glue-trap. A stream buffers our property from the Sully Lake Volunteer Fire Department. Drowning’s not a great way to die, but it beats being stuck to death.
I tossed the glue-trap and it floated. The mouse renewed. I found myself rooting for it. There’s a documentary about rats swimming across the Hudson to eat corpses during the Spanish flu, and I applied my knowledge: If rats can swim, mice can swim. I tried to pry it free, but the glue-trap flipped and floated downstream. The mouse submerged, inhaling water, its tiny lungs painfully worthless.
Hopefully I just imagined those tiny bubbles. The final exhale. On my way back to the house, I blew all the air from my lungs to see what it’s like.
That night I told June about the weirdness of the mouse’s agony. She looked at me, like, It’s just a mouse, while I poked at the flames with the really long tongs. I described its face — that questioning, sideways look — sideways because its head had been glued — and June suggested mouse traps, instant death — “Be done with it.”
But I couldn’t imagine sopping guts, or resetting bloody traps without losing my fingers, so I Googled and discovered this humane catch and release gizmo: The Good Sa-Mouse-itan.
Two days later I was setting butter-sized, plastic cubes with Wheat-Thins slathered with Jiff. I smeared peanut butter on the tiny one-way doors, as recommended.
The next day a wistful mouse was praying through the translucence. I used the really long tongs again to venture the mouse outside, careful not to open the door gravitationally. The mouse looked pensively through its tiny windshield, crossing the lawn, wondering when we were going to be there. Before the stream, I flipped the cube upside-down.
But the mouse was on point, its tiny feet suctioned to its plastic prison.
I shook the cube, but the mouse was afraid of change, I don’t know.
“It’s not going to get any better,” I told it, explaining the options: snap-trap, glue, drowning, poison (which I’d read is painful and smells up the house).
It was breathing incredibly fast. Or maybe that was the heart.
The mouse finally dropped to the grass and sprinted between my legs like a ground ball and darted back to the house.
Shit! Shit! SHIT!
I texted June: One got away — and went to work.
My students said, “At least you don’t have rats.”
That night June and I were appreciating the fire, June reading her meditations, me reading about rats liking to be tickled and laughing ultrasonically. The Good Sa-Mouse-itan in the mudroom started going berserk. It was late and I wasn’t about to deal, but June slammed her readings at the rattling and scraping and eerie silences in-between. She said if I wasn’t going to do anything about the mouse, maybe she was going to do something about the mouse.
By which she meant, kill it.
I explained once again the only humane solution — to which she said, “Humane?! Mice aren’t human!” and read to me about God giving Man dominion over every creeping thing that creeps.
I wasn’t going to out-Bible her, so I told her that maybe my aversion to killing mice had to do with my big brother’s death. Herman had recently died of lung cancer, three thousand miles away, no remission. I told her I’d been lying awake in bed at night, pretending I was my dying brother — to which she said I needed help, needed to get over it because I was starting to freak her out.
The mouse had become long-term silent, so I went into the mudroom, worrying that June might be right.
There were two mice. Huddled. Cuddled. Spooning in the cube.
June followed me. I showed off the five-gallon pickle bucket I’d stabbed with a French knife so the mice could breathe. I’d drawn a picture of a mouse in indelible ink on the mouse bucket, so it wouldn’t get confused with the non-mouse buckets. I explained my plan of transporting mice each morning to the parking lot at work.
“If you have the energy,” June said.
Next morning both mice had managed to tip The Good Sa-Mouse-itan over and open the door.
The mice and crackers were gone.
I didn’t text June.
My students said, “You have to be smarter than the mice.”
That night I wedged the Good Sa-Mouse-itans between paint cans, glue traps that the previous owners had left behind, and June’s retired postal goulashes. There would be no shimmying or shaking, no tipping on the count of one two THREE! (I’ve read that mice can count to three.)
Next morning several glue raps had been slid together to form one giant, sticky mass. The glue wasn’t enough to get me stuck, of course, but the cardboard caused my moccasins to slide and I bounced my head on the floor.
I remained taught and unmoving, like a sausage within its casing. The shock of falling, I don’t know.
I carefully undulated my body, but that felt tingly and electric, so I started panicking and panicked that panicking was the worst thing I could do.
I imagined my brother, in San Francisco, dying of cancer in the midst of the pandemic, not allowed visitors, texting me: I am in need of someone to hold my hand.
I resigned to stay there until June woke up, performing June’s new breathing exercise: Breathe Jesus in, June out — breathing Victor out, of course.
The cold linoleum started feeling nice against my cheek. I felt at peace.
But then June found me and called 9-1-1. The firehouse siren next door sounded — which was weird, the siren sounding for me.
It was Chum Chadwick, retired Chief to the Sully Lake Volunteer Fire Department, who first responded. Chum’d been next door hosing off his personal vehicle and heard the call on the scanner. I would rather have kept falling down in the family, but there was Chum, clomping through the mudroom in his really big boots.
“Hit your head?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
He asked what day it was, who the president was, and who’s the only baseball team to ever win the World Series twenty-seven times.
Then Sully Lake’s little fire truck gurgled into the driveway, and non-retired Fred and Gary stomped in officially with their really big boots.
“Probably a stinger,” they said. “Temporary. Shake it off. Rub some dirt.”
Chum noticed the glue-traps, Good Sa-Mouse-itans, pickle-bucket. “I got better idea,” he said.
But I didn’t want a cat. The way they can take you or leave you. And I didn’t want my mice eaten, just out of the house.
Chum’s a hunter. All volunteer firemen are hunters.
Chum kept joking about catch-and-release, and Fred and Gary quipped about Democrat-run households.
“He’s a Mets fan. What do you expect?”
A couple days later, June held a cat, arguing that the cat would dissuade mice — to which I suggested olfactory repellents — to which June pointed to her nose and said, “Sinus issues” — to which I pointed to the cat and said, “Sinus issues” — to which June just sniffed.
June named the cat Paul.
It kind of grew on me, the cat — curled onto my chest, warm and idling in time with my heart.
But then Paul brought us the head of a mouse.
I was certain that this was the mouse that had sprinted back into the house — the mouse that I’d spoken to, reasoned with — the mouse that had inspired me to Google, Do mice remember you? and to learn that yes, mice do remember you.
It was like losing a friend. Like losing my brother. The permanence. One day you’re receiving texts about the stupid Mets, and the next day . . .
I sank into the armchair and cried.
June said I was ridiculous.
But I wasn’t crying over the mouse. I was crying over my brother’s death.
For the first time.
June tossed the severed head into the fire with bare hands — which made me cry even worse — the flames. My brother cremated. Herman’s own words: “Ptzzzwipp! Just like that! You’re gone!”
June assured me that Herman was in a fabulously glorious place. “Don’t you believe?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
June hugged and kissed me all over, while I cried into the cat and kept saying, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” — apologizing for not being there to hold my dying brother’s hand.
Next morning all three Good Sa-Mouse-itans were shaking. Three. Four. Five mice per-cube. I pried off the lid to the mouse-bucket, in preparation for a load, and mice started coming out of the walls and jumping into the bucket of their own accord.
There were so many mice, I had to put the cat out.
There were so many mice, I delivered them to school and they looked like a wavy ocean, scurrying towards the cafeteria.
My students said, “That’s dope.”
But of course the cat went missing.
June asked why the hell I’d let it out — to which I told her about the surrendering mice — to which June said I hadn’t been myself since hitting my head — to which I reminded her that she’d been the one to put glue-traps out without asking — to which she said maybe I should have asked before letting out the goddam cat.
June’s volunteering stopped. Even Christian Concessions. She spent her days in bed with the furnace off and electric blanket cranked. The bedroom smelled like the inside of a tent.
I offered that Paul would find his way home, but we’d both heard about the neighbor cats getting eaten. Cougars making a comeback. Eagles. Predators.
Plus, cars.
I offered that Paul might be in Heaven, to which June shot back, “There aren’t any cats in Heaven.”
My students said, “Look on the South Side. There’s lots of cats on the South Side.”
I found Paul on Pork Street, a detour one morning, and flicked him into the bushes.
I felt bad, but also a special glow remembering when Herman and I found a dead woodchuck and surprised our sunbathing mother.
“People let cats out,” I told June. “I’m no more responsible for Paul’s demise, than for getting snow-stranded at the airport the night before my brother died.”
June widened her eyes like Rudy Giuliani and said we all make choices. I could have flown sooner — to hell with Covid restrictions — I should have demanded to see my brother.
There was a scratching in the wall, and I thought, I’m going to kill you motherfuckers.
June stutter-cried into her pillow. About the cat. Herself. Us.
The mice, maybe.
Suddenly I thought, the mice were trying to tell me something: We only live once. I should tolerate June’s mis-directional loathing and be a loving and supportive husband, despite her being such a hurtful bitch.
I lied down, still in my work-clothes, and kissed June all over.
June un-smooshed her face and turned to me with wet mouse-eyes and asked if I’d go with her to church.
“Okay,” I said.
It would be my first time.
The Church of Tongues turned out to be just a storefront between a pizza place and pawn shop.
The service started out okay, but exploded into a reverie that had me searching for the exits. Chum Chadwick was dancing erect, arms rigid to his side, like one of those fleet-footed sausage racers at a Milwaukee Brewers game. Fred and Gary, in their Sunday firemen best, were sprinting back and forth, shaking, dancing, Praise be’s.
June went toes-up on the floor, hands violently jazzed, and Pastor stuck the microphone in her face so she could be heard over the Christian Rock.
“Aglossia!” she cried. “Glossolalia!”
The congregation erupted.
I didn’t want to lose my wife — to Christ. To the Sully Lake Volunteer Fire Department.
“Kcus seeknay!” I shouted. ““STEM OG S’TEL!!!”
A cat appeared — Paul? — chasing a mouse. And then Jesus laid his hands on me and asked if I believe. And then I saw my big brother ducking out to smoke but Herman was gone when we got out.
It was like June and I had had sex, only not with each other.
My students said, “TMI.”
June was okay now, about the cat — and I thought I was okay, too — that I believed Herman was happy in the Kingdom of Heaven (even though Herman had been a communist).
But the ants gave me away, to myself, to June.
The ants.
I’d been leaving poison puddles by the toothbrushes, and the ants had gone after them with gusto. But when there were body parts one day, I Googled, Do ants feel pain? and yes, ants do feel pain.
June caught me transporting a wayward ant on the tip of my toothbrush down into the basement and laid down her gauntlet.
“If you truly believed,” she said, “you wouldn’t be piddling with ants.”
She thumped upstairs.
I was trying to decide what to do — with the ant, myself, my obsessive grief — when June reappeared on the basement landing.
“There’s a bat!” she said, out of breath, askew.
She found my ant-hand with her hand, then switched over to my non-ant-hand and held it.
The Holy Spirit must have hit me again, because I smooshed the ant into my lounge pants, dropped my toothbrush, and headed for the bat.
“Bring me the tongs,” I said. “The really long tongs.”
But upstairs I heard the same scratching that had inspired me to church. Those motivational mice turned out to be just branches brushing against aluminum siding.
What if Church of Tongues “Jesus” had just been some auxiliary fireman with a mullet and beard? What if “Herman” walking out the door had just been Pastor’s weird son? What if we’re all just circumstantial pests?
“Are you okay?” June kept asking, from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
Keith Stahl’s first novel, Dear Future Occupants, is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press (Fall, 2026), and his poetry collection, From the Gunroom, is now available from Main Street Rag Publishing. After thirty-plus years in the restaurant business, he graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing in prose from Syracuse University, where he currently teaches.