Of mice and me. No, that's not a typo.

So there's been mouse sightings in my workplace. I know this because of the ear-piercing shrieks that come from the women I work with when they catch sight of mice. The otherwise sensible woman I work next to is rendered nearly inconsolable when a mouse appears. More than once when there's been a sighting of these little rodents work has, for those women, ground to a halt as they scream, discuss their terror with other women, jump at every unexpected movement, and pull their feet up onto their chairs.

Now, as a concerned and indeed compassionate adult, after a mouse sighting I take great time and care to make sure these women hear what they need to hear: that they are complete pansies and absolutely entertaining to me in their terror. And, no, I'm not kidding, I rail on these women for being afraid of a thing the size of my Mr. Potato-moto chip-clip. Seriously, the biggest mouse we've seen is, including the tail, maybe the length of one of my fingers.

Maybe I'm just a jerk, but I cannot get worked up over a tiny rodent and find it silly that other people do. A spider the size of my finger would concern me a bit; a wasp that big would get me to arm myself with smashing weapons; but a mouse? A cute little mouse? No. I had lots of little pets when I was a child, including mice, and have seen adorable little rats and whatnot as a grown man. Sorry, not scary. Startling when you're not expecting them, certainly. But that startled turns to "aww" very quickly for me.

One important detail to this story is that in all these scream-inducing mouse sightings, I have barely ever even gotten the slightest glimpse of the little bastard. I think they're adorable, so that annoyed me. However, since the mouse generally ignored me, I didn't hold much hope of seeing one.

Then I neglected to put my breakfast bars into plastic tubs! I didn't see a mouse, but I saw the signs of the little guy eating my breakfast bars. Rather than throw them out immediately, I decided to wait and see if I could see the little guy. And, with my continued neglect of throwing mouse bait out, today I finally got to see the little dude! Twice! And he was a tiny, adorable little mouse who ran away from me with all possible speed.

Obviously, as I value my ears, I haven't told anyone this. The women would either freak out or get mad at me for taunting my mouseless fate; everyone else would just tell me to stop it since it's hard enough to get rid of mice as it is. But, through a combination of neglect and patience, I finally got my very own mouse sighting here at work that didn't involve screaming.

And, yes, I threw away the mouse bait. Otherwise I'd probably get more screaming at some point soon.