Finally one day I had a close encounter with it. I entered the kitchen and I saw it darting along the kitchen slab. At the same I and it moved towards the edge of the slab from opposite directions. It stopped in its tracks. I too stood motionlessly. And the I saw the cutest mouse ever. I had never thought that mice could be even be cute. It was a few inches long, with clean and shiny dark brown fur, black eyes which looked like deep black beads, pointy whiskers and a sleek tail. The only cute mouse I knew was Jerry from ‘Tom & Jerry’. Hence I christened it ‘Jerry’ then and there. And I knew at that instant that I couldn’t hurt it. Jerry did to me what Puss In Boots does to unsuspecting victims. So I let Jerry go. Later I alerted the in-house members about Jerry.

We got used to Jerry. Az also had a glimpse of his cuteness and agreed that we couldn’t hurt it. Hence we and the darting Jerry shared space. When Mom and Dad (Az’s parents) arrived last month, they saw it. And I simply said, “Oh! That’s Jerry.” Dad was amused. He said we should capture it and tie a bell around its neck so that we would know about its movements.

But other than Jerry, we started seeing something else running around too. It was bigger and slower than Jerry. It was an ugly rat! We blamed its presence on the boys who went out leaving the main door ajar. Rats are not acceptable. So rat-kill cakes were bought and placed strategically. Finally the rat got captured and done away with. Luckily Jerry was smart enough not to consume any of that.

After a couple of weeks, Mom and Dad were out of town to visit relatives. During that time, I caught Jerry jumping up on to my trunk and then I realized that it’s time. So I placed the mouse trap with a trail of biscuits at one of the turnings Jerry takes frequently. This time Jerry was not smart though. It took the bait and got captured. It was frightened and tried to get out by cutting the metal. But of course it couldn’t. It was so cute that all of us went gaga over it. We all started discussing what to do it Jerry. Killing it was totally out of question. To leave it on the main road could also be injurious to him as different predators were always on the prowl. Az suggested we should keep it in the cage itself as it would be safe. But again how do you keep such a cute thing in captivity and make it sad. It was night time and we decided to keep it through the night. I gave it some more to eat and bade it a good night. 

Captured