I had just woken up, and there was a scratching or very tiny pounding noise in the kitchen. "Great, the mouse is back," I thought to myself. So I walked into the kitchen and tried to trace where the noise was coming from -- fortunately, it didn't stop as soon as I walked in. It was coming from the counter, on which there were a few items -- some dishes waiting to be washed as well as several things we don't use regularly that have nowhere else to be stored.

As I got closer to the counter, though, the noise did stop. And then the phone rang. "I'll let the machine get it," I nearly said out loud, as if the mouse wanted to know I'd rather focus on him than the phone call. "It's probably just a telemarketer, anyway. Grr."

The phone kept ringing and the mouse was still not moving. When the machine did pick up, I found out that it was a call I needed to get, so I made a run for it, hoping that the mouse was someplace he couldn't get out of so that he'd still be removable when I got back. Using the portable phone, I made my way back to the kitchen to keep looking for the mouse.

Judging by the sounds that had been made earlier, and the lack of scurrying-noises, I figured the mouse was probably inside something on the counter. There was a vase. Nope, not in there. A cheese-grater? Nope, that's empty, too. The George Foreman grill was clean and empty, no signs of a tresspassing rodent to be found.

I looked in the large mixing-bowl that held a few dirty dishes, but saw nothing other than the dishes. I looked in the coffeepot and the filter area, in the paper-towel tube, in everything on that counter and didn't see a thing. So, still talking casually on the phone, I finally looked again at the stack of dishes.

"I thought I threw my tea-bag out the other night." Underneath a small glass bowl, like the one I'd used to hold my tea bag in between the two cups I usually use any given teabag for, I could see something that looked like a red-berry-zinger teabag squashed, but still not dry. "Maybe Erin had a cup?"

I went to pick up the dish so I could throw the teabag out, and then realized that it was no teabag. It was the mouse.

So I took the other dishes out of the large bowl, held the glass bowl against the mixing bowl with the mouse inside, and proudly told the friend I was talking to on the phone that I had caught the mouse. (As if I had a whole lot to do with it.)

Putting a kink in my neck by holding the phone against my shoulder with my head, I held the bowls in one hand and used the other to open the back door. And then the other back door. And I took my little mouse trespasser outside, where he belongs. When I took the glass dish off to free him, he looked all raggedy. His fur was matted in some places and sticking up in others, and there were droppings all over the bottom of the mixing bowl. My guess is he'd been in there for quite a while and would have died there within the next couple of hours.

He looked at me, with his HUGE, bulging eyes, blinded by the sunlight.

And then he bolted into the bushes at the far end of our yard.

Hopefully, he'll stay outside -- where he belongs -- this time.