After Whitney also sighted the mouse, who sauntered into the living room like he owned the place while the television was on (destroying my theory about him not having been seen before because he would only come out when the house was perfectly quiet) we ordered a trap from Amazon. The one that we got is a long clear-green plastic thing designed to look like a house, with two ends - one is a door that's removable from the top only by human hands, and the other is the trap. When pressure is put on a platform near the other end, a door springs up from inside to catch whatever took the bait inside until the other door is removed manually.

This is a humane mouse trap - as an example of the kind of slush that only the Americans are really capable of, the front of the box honestly reads "Do we have to kill the mouse, Mommy? - No, honey, the earth is big enough for all of us". Welcome to Bleurgh City. And inside, after thanking you for being a kindhearted person, the instruction booklet is also irritatingly hippy (and full of typos):

This allows the mouse to escape without panic, so its survival in the outdoors is more assured. It si [sic] a joy to see a mouse escape, and to realize its life has been spared. This lesson in compassion is best shared with a child!

Before it's devoured by a fox twenty minutes later. Anyway, I set this up when it arrived, baiting it with a pinch of oats and some Honey Nut Cheerios, and left it on the kitchen floor underneath a cupboard that I'd seen it run towards on Monday.

After spending far too long on the Internet as usual, I went to bed at about midnight, and lay awake for a bit trying to forget about listening for the trap, telling my over-aware brain that the noises I heard were just doors being opened and closed next door and that I would be able to check it in the morning. Then, after about ten minutes, I heard an unmistakable plasticy snapping noise, and sat up, waking up Whitney as I said I thought I'd heard it.

When I dragged the trap out from under the cupboard, inside was the little brown mouse - I was surprised at how clean, sleek and quite adorable it looked compared to the bedraggled look I had expected from a wild scavenging animal. It was running from one end of the enclosure to the other searching for an exit, had already scoffed the entirety of the bait that I had left out, and I had read that they can easily die of panic if you leave them too long, so I resolved to go out and set it free immediately in the only non-built-up space within walking distance.

So I shambled down to the graveyard at half past midnight, feeling a bit like I was going out to dig up some body parts for Dr. Stein, with a torch in one hand and the trap in the other - the mouse banged about from one end to the other at first, but had calmed down by the time I got there. I walked some way into the darkness before setting the trap down near a tree and opening it up, but the mouse stayed inside. I turned the torch off for a moment and then on again to see if it would go in the darkness, but it was still there - but as I leaned a little closer it honestly launched out of the box, going about six feet before landing, and ran off into the night on a Cheerios-induced sugar high that I hope didn't end with it killing every other creature in the cemetery.

I set the trap up again when I returned, and wasn't really any less restless listening for it throughout the rest of the night - but when I woke up, it was still baited and open, so hopefully he was the only one.