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The mouse

So, because I'm a man, she asks me, "Will you come by and get rid of the mouse? "Um, sure. Of course." "Are you sure?" she says. I've already forgotten her name. I actually never knew it. "I hope you don't mind.

So, because I'm a man, she asks me, "Will you come by and get rid of the mouse?

"Um, sure. Of course."

"Are you sure?" she says. I've already forgotten her name. I actually never knew it.

"I hope you don't mind. My roommate is, like, totally freaking out over it."

"Sure. No big deal."

"And my boyfriend would do it but I'm not seeing him tonight."

"Right. Not a problem."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

So we leave her friend Gabby alone at the table with our wine and my personal items: journal, map, wallet, etc. Not a good idea since I've known these people all of 20 minutes. I consider myself a decent judge of character except when alcohol's involved. I've been burned before.

Like the time in Brussels when an Arab fellow wrapped his leg around mine and engaged me in an amusing little gig. Up and down we'd go, legs intertwined, hips thrusting forward in circles right in the middle of some plaza. This didn't seem weird to me. I took it as Eastern hospitality. After the third time, I was really into it, and then he ran off suddenly and I noticed that my wallet was missing...

But I'm not thinking about any of this. We're walking down Queen St. West and the Girl With No Name keeps thanking me, over and over. "This is so nice of you, oh my gawd!" and so on. This is my first visit to Toronto and wonder if all the women here are this relentlessly gracious. I know she's just being nice but there's only so much gratitude one man can accept in three minutes, especially when I haven't done anything yet.

She unlocks the door to her apartment - maybe three doors from the bar. It's a discreet number sandwiched between two boutiques. Her flat is spacious, the type of suite that costs people their children's eyeballs in Manhattan.

"Nice place," I say.

"I know! Isn't it fun ? The dead mouse is in her room."

And indeed it is, lying still in the corner on one of those glue traps, the flimsy platter types that toddlers sometime mistake as playtime toys, and wail like genocide victims when pulled from their chests.

This particular trap had attracted lint and what looked like human hair. I crouch down to pick up the dead mouse's final resting disc but the mouse starts squirming and squeaking.

I jump back and point. "Ah! It's still alive! Look! See!"

"Oh my gawd, oh my gawd ! You are such a trooper."

The mouse keeps squeaking, trying to right itself off its side to no avail. Its skin pulls with every thrust the mouse makes to escape. It squeals in, what I assume to be, astonishing pain. It looks up at me. Squeak. Eyes pleading.

"What are we going to do with this thing? Should we let it go?" I ask the Girl With No Name.

"Let's just leave it in the street."

"And then what? Leave it for dead?" I say this in the stairwell and she opens the door, dusk light flooding in. The mouse and I squeal in unison.

I bend over to the leave the disc at the door of one of the boutiques - a fancy shoe shop, very classy.

"No, over here. In the alley."

So I walk four or five paces with the disc held out like it's a platter and I'm a waiter serving Mouse a la Carte. A man notices and stumbles backward, startled, eyes nearly popping out of his head.

"Ah!" he says.

"It's okay," I say. "It's stuck."

The alley is clean - too clean for an alley. No Dumpsters or hobos. No trash of any kind. It's baffling. I set the mouse down as it gives one final, pleading glance over its itty-bitty shoulder. I consider pulling it off with my fingers but the anti-rodent lobby has done a number on me. I'm scared it might carry malaria despite the records showing no mouse has ever carried malaria.

But I still feel bad for the little bugger. "We should let it go. Do you have a stick?"

The Girl With No Name doesn't say anything. She doesn't acknowledge my query in any way. She's gazing across the street, at a flowery dress in some bay window. We move on.

"Oh my gawd, you are such a trooper," she says. "Such. A. Trooper."

"Yes."

So we sit down and I take a liberal swig of wine and tell Gabby the story.

"And those are supposedly the 'humane' animal traps," she says.

I nod but it gets me wondering how that's any more humane than the traps that break their necks? Or killing it the old fashion way, with a boot or a bottle of shampoo? Letting it starve to death on a flimsy plastic disc is a cruel punishment for simply being a mouse in someone's house. I wouldn't like it a whole lot if the mouse did that to me; why should I treat it any different?

Later on, as I'm stumbling toward my room at the Sheraton with a glass of wine still glued firmly in hand, a police cruiser stops me. They blow the siren, flash the lights, make a whole production. They reprimand me, write me up and I keep thinking about that little mouse on the platter. I'm that mouse now, stuck and squirming to present my case to the powers that hold my fate.

The only difference is that mouse will die tonight and I will sleep in absolute luxury with pillows the size of English mastiffs.