A trap I set for the mouse living in the wall by my stove was full this afternoon. Of course, I found him after a prolonged time from my apartment so there was also a respectably broad smell, filling up the space between a nook under my cabinets and the kitchen sink, growing for me. It was one of those slow odors that is so bloated with fragrance it takes a moment for your nostrils to gulp in every sour corner of the cloud. An aroma with all the laziness of natural gas, pregnant with a shovel full of crunched guts, an open wound spilling spine and innards, clogged by the wet stench of an anal gland (involuntarily discharged during death). I put on two oven mittens and picked the little guy up. If I'd known it was a mouse like him I wouldn't have done it. He could have hung out around the place, a regular. Two weeks ago I had baited the trap and left it unarmed so he could come out and enjoy a dollop of peanut butter and bacon fat. One glut with the guillotine, imparting the gift of false security, before riding his little pine plank into a trash bag today. At least now I don't have to get a cat.

        I could never afford a trap big enough to catch one of those.