mouse

So as I turned down my street today, a mouse popped up from someplace under the wipers and ran across the windshield. He ran to one side, then back to the other. At one point he turned and stared through the windshield at me. He looked just like this.

I parked the car and popped the hood. The mouse froze and then, before I could try to scoop him up on a legal pad and deposit him onto the grass, disappeared someplace into the car. I watched for a few minutes to see if he'd reappear. I thought about the wires he might be chewing on, or what might happen if he died somewhere in the body panels and then turned to mouse jerky. In the heat of May and June.

I pulled a bag of Hostess chocolate Donettes from my bag--leftover, along with a half-gallon of mango-orange juice, from a morning meeting--and left him a trail of crumbs. Hopefully mice like trans fats better than cozy hiding places in 1998 Camrys.

*

In twenty-four hours I'll be finished. The CW grades are calculated, the portfolios read. All that's left is finalizing some last grades. Then sending out hey would you blurb me e-mails*. Then it's down south for dinner with a future Michigander. Then it's to Wisconsin. Then back here and summer class. Then to Carolina. Then July and August. Then it all starts up again. How has it been nearly a year.

*

Yesterday it took Truman twenty minutes to figure out how to eat steak fries:



The problem was not size or temperature, but that they were on the wet patio. Once I placed them in his bowl, he wolfed them down.



What a douche.


* this is fucking terrifying.