Bless this Mouse by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page A

good friend once, at the university library. Leonard. Sweet guy. He lived in the audio section. Nibbled at the edges of opera albums, mostly. But then one day he wandered out for a breath of fresh air, innocent as you please, and there, lying right there in the sun, was a large yellow cat, and faster than you can imagine, well..." He gulped. "Oh, sorry!" he said, and began to cry, wiping his eyes with a wrinkled paw.
    Hildegarde patted him gently. "I know, I know. We've all experienced it," she said. They sat together silently for a moment.
    There was a noise from the church. They peered again through the ferns and saw the uniformed man come out to his van. He entered it and then emerged, carrying equipment, and reentered the side door of Saint Bartholemew's.
    "Traps," Ignatious said, knowingly.
    "We can deal with those. I sprang two traps in the kitchen just last Sunday," Hildegarde said.
    "Was that you? I overheard Lucretia say that she was the one who disarmed those traps."
    "
Lucretia!
" Hildegarde drew herself up. Her whiskers quivered in outrage. "What a liar!"
    Ignatious rolled his eyes. "She's campaigning, you know, to oust you and be Mouse Mistress."
    Hildegarde was so angry that she couldn't speak.
    "Calm down. I want to tell you something about the special traps he just carried in there. And it's something that Lucretia won't have any knowledge of. I've made quite a study of traps, you know. Back when I was at the univers—"
    Hildegarde shot him her silencing glare.
    "Sorry," Ignatious said. "But pull yourself together and listen."
    "I'm listening. You said 'special traps'?"
    Ignatious nodded. "Yes. This is horrible. Heinous, actually."
    "Describe it."
    "There is no spring. No nasty little piece of metal to bop you on the head. And no bait."
    "No cheese?"
    "
Nada.
That's Spanish, incidentally. Means 'nothing.'"
    She ignored that. "How do they work, then?"
    "Nice scent to them. A little rectangle of cardboard with a very enticing smell. The Great X simply sets them about in all the obvious places. Closets. Kitchen sink. Trash cans. You know: all of our usual foraging spots."
    "But no cheese. You said no cheese."
    "No, but the smell lures mice. I know. I've smelled it.
Terribly
tempting. So the unsuspecting mouse goes close. It doesn't look like a trap. Simply a piece of cardboard, after all."
    Hildegarde shuddered. She could tell something awful was going to be described. "What happens?" she asked.
    "It's covered with glue."
    "
Glue?
"
    Ignatious nodded solemnly. "So the mouse leans forward to sniff or nibble—you know how we do. Or reaches out with a paw."
    Hildegarde cringed.
How utterly cruel!
"And gets stuck," she said.
    He nodded. "Dies there. Starves."
    Hildegarde couldn't speak. She was horrified.
    "I saw something funny once," Ignatious said, trying to cheer her. "The janitor at the university library? He reached for his vacuum cleaner, and one of those traps was stuck under it."
    Hildegarde frowned. "Nothing funny about that."
    "So the janitor tried to pry it off with his foot. And his foot got stuck. So there he was, attached to his own vacuum cleaner! He had to clump down the hall, dragging all the equipment, to find someone to help him."
    She smiled slightly at the thought. But
still.
It was very cruel.
    "Look! There he goes!" Ignatious pointed. The exterminator came out and tossed his bag into the back of the van. Then he got in. After a moment they watched him drive away from the church.
    "So that's it? Gluey traps?" Hildegarde asked.
    "No. He will have put poison around as well. There are many kinds of rodent poison—sorry to use the word
rodent—brodifacoum, zinc phosphide, difethia-lone—
"
    "Oh, stop!" Hildegarde put her little paws over her ears. "I'd almost rather live Outdoors," she said with a sigh.
    Ignatious shook his head. "It's worse out here," he said. "Much more dangerous. We didn't even tell them about
hawks.
And of course, winter's coming soon. You know what that