Henry
Not to generalize, but there are basically two types of guys: those who know their way around a hardware store and those who don’t.
I thought having my brother with me would help make it seem like I belong in that first category.
Unfortunately, Cal and Mick, the owner of Mick’s Hardware, are making fun of me right to my face.
“One thing you could try,” says Mick, “is negotiate with the mice.”
“Right,” I say.
“Good idea,” says Cal. Kelsey is here, too, via BabyBjorn again. She’s holding a teething ring shaped like a crab and watching us talk.
“What you do,” says Mick, “is have a little chat with the mouse in charge. Tell him you want him and his buddies out. My experience, most of the time they listen to reason and skedaddle.”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to participate in my own ridicule, so I say, “Right,” again.
If you asked AI to generate the owner of an independent hardware store in Baltimore in December, you’d get Mick.
He’s a giant, he’s wearing an unbuttoned flannel over a Ravens T-shirt, and his hands are big enough to palm my head.
Oh, and he’s also wearing a Santa hat. A Beach Boys Christmas album is playing from a little boom box on a shelf filled with bags of sidewalk salt.
“Or you could play hardball,” says Cal.
“Really?” I ask. “We’re still doing this?”
I called Cal this morning and told him the situation. I left out the part about me screaming. He had a light day, so he agreed to help me.
I’m starting to wish he hadn’t.
“Catch one of the mice,” he says. “Rough him up a little. Nothing terrible—a black eye, one of his little arms in a sling, maybe. Then send him back to tell his crew there’s more of this where that came from.”
Mick and Cal laugh, and this all feels like a brotherly betrayal. Kelsey laughs, too, which makes it seem like she’s also making fun of me, but I’m nearly certain she isn’t because I don’t think babies can be jerks like that.
Finally, Cal gives me a shove. “Sorry, man. Anyway, yeah, Mick, what’ve you got?”
Mick folds his big arms and rolls his eyes. “You want my professional opinion?”
“Look, I didn’t make them up,” I say. “I read about them online. They’re called humane traps.”
Mick tugs his beard. “Yeah, we got a few. Sit tight. I’ll grab you one.”
He lumbers off, and we’re joined by a late-middle-aged lady who works here, too. Her name tag says “Ronnie,” and she’s wearing a smaller Santa hat. “Don’t let these two morons get to you,” she tells me. “Have some gum if you want, on the house.”
I grab a pack of Wrigley’s from a fishbowl by the register and make a point not to offer Cal a piece.
Mick returns with a metal cage about the size of a milk crate.
He pops the top open to show us the inside.
It’s like a little jail cell with a mouse-size door.
“Can I borrow that, sweetheart?” he asks Kelsey, gently taking her crab to use as a stunt mouse.
“You put your bait here. I recommend peanut butter. Little dum-dums can’t resist it.
They go in through here, start chowing down, then, blammo, door closes behind ’em, and they’re in the clink, safe and sound. ”
Cal nods while I chew gum.
“And you can keep catching ’em, too,” he says, demonstrating. “See? Door only opens one way. They’ll just wander in, one after the other.”
When it becomes clear that Mick’s tutorial is over, I say, “Okay, well, then what?”
Across the store, Ronnie, who I thought was on my side, laughs.
Mick gives Kelsey her crab back. “What do you mean?”
I look at Cal, then Mick, then Ronnie, then Kelsey. “What do I do with the mice?”
Mick clears his throat. “Well, my friend, I think you’ve just identified the tragic flaw of humane traps.”