Rodent running amok at work

There has been an unwanted guest running around the office the past few days.
It's small, it's a grayish-brown colour and it is freaking people out.
It is easy to tell when Mickey's cousin makes an appearance – just follow the screams.
ﾒThat was gross. It ran right over my foot,” said a female staff member after an up-close-and-personal encounter of the vermin kind.
ﾒWell, think of how scared the mouse was when it saw you,” was my soothing reply, but oddly enough she did not find it very comforting.
After all, a mouse is a tiny little creature that must see us humans as scary giants.
While the office is hardly infested with mice – a single mouse does not an invasion make – it is still creeping people out, so steps are underway to take care of the problem.
I suggested they bring in the Critter Assault Tactical Squad – CATS – to take care of the situation. There are a couple feral cats living in the alley behind the building that could dispatch of a rascally rodent in no time. All we would have to do is herd the cats into the building and let them do their thing.
Of course herding cats is slightly easier than raising a teenage daughter, but the cats won't burst in to tears every 30 seconds.
The other suggestion to get rid of the rodent was to arm a few select staffers with BB guns. My sons each have BB handguns and I could strut around like Wyatt Earp and hunt down the varmints like an old west bounty hunter.
While that would likely be the most entertaining way (for me anyway) to get rid of the beast, I suspect PETDLR (People for the Ethical Treatment of Dirty Little Rodents) would get their knickers in a knot and I anticipate a more traditional method will be used, such as people running around with hammers and hockey sticks.
I am kidding of course, all we need are hockey sticks.
Wait, I'm kidding again.
Although I am not privy to the inner workings of the rodent-elimination project, I suspect traps will be strategically placed to dispatch the rodent from this earth.
The Interweb is a gold mine of mouse-killing information with dozens of sites explaining the finer points of exterminating the little blighters.
Oddly enough, cheese is not recommended as the trap food of choice. It would seem all those childhood cartoons I watched lied about a mouse's penchant for hardened yellow dairy products.
The food of choice to catch the furry menace is peanut butter because it sticks to whatever you put it on, such as the trigger mechanism of the death machine known as a mouse trap.
There are also a bevy of elaborate mouse-killing methods available on the Net, but the spring-loaded trap of doom is still the cheapest tried and true method.
How many rodents have been sent to mouse Valhalla by the little piece of wood with a spring and metal attachments we will never know.
There are, of course, humane traps. This is where you catch the mouse alive, take it outside to release it and then you run like mad to try and get back into the building before the mouse does.
Someone even came up with a water bucket trap. This where you set up an elaborate string system over a bucket half filled with water.
The mouse will venture onto the string in an effort to reach the bait before falling into the water where it will drown – that is after spending who knows how long trying its best to stay alive.
Sounds kinda cruel to me. I much prefer the quick and painless of the good, old-fashioned spring-loaded dealer of mouse death.
You can try, but I doubt you can actually build a better mouse trap.

Copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh