W for War is Brutal

MusicMan had a gig Saturday night, so it was just the puppies and I hangin’ out at home. It started out as a peaceful, quiet night. I practiced some Algebra problems, realized I was really tired and not in the mood to do anything but laze around, and decided to watch a movie instead. We’ve splurged on Showtime in order to be able to get our Dexter fix, so I decided to see what movies they were playing. “The Road” sounded interesting, so I settled down to watch.

Have you seen or heard about this movie? It’s based on the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. Just in case you haven’t, I won’t spoil it for you, but here's a brief summary:

The movie takes place within the few years following an unknown apocalyptic event, the details of which are never revealed. The world is constantly dark, covered with what seems to be ash, and plant and animal life have been wiped out. Few seem to have survived, except for the main characters—a man and a boy whose names we don’t know—and the few others they run into along their journey south. The man and boy battle to stay alive as they journey towards, what they hope, is a better and brighter future.

Perhaps I’m not as “cultured” as I’d like to think, but I really disliked this movie. I wanted to stop watching it several times, because it was really just depressing, but I just had to see if there was a happy ending. It didn’t help that, because the movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world, everything was always dark and gray—that really set the mood. But all of the struggles the man and boy face along the way just got to be too much. I found myself wondering when they’d catch a break! So, yeah, this movie just wasn’t for me. That shouldn’t prevent you from watching it, of course, if it sounds interesting to you.

When the movie was over, I went out to our attached garage to have a final cigarette before bed. (I know, I know, it’s a dirty, horrible, disgusting habit. I’m trying to get myself into the right mindset to quit once and for all.) As I was standing there, contemplating what I would do were I stuck in a post-apocalyptic world and forced to face some of the situations and decisions the man and the boy did, I noticed movement in the periphery. Turning my head more to the left, to get a good look, I noticed a little gray mouse peeking over the safety sensor for our automatic garage door.

W.T.F?! From about 10 feet away, I slowly and carefully walked over to the other side of the garage to see if there was a hole that Mr. Mouse had come through. I saw nothing, so I figured he must’ve scampered in when the garage door was open and now couldn’t figure out how to leave, or he’d gotten in under the gap between the garage door and the concrete. I opened the door to the house and called Dexter, our Pug, out to the garage in the hopes that he would scare Mr. Mouse away. It seemed to work, because when I looked again, Mr. Mouse was nowhere in sight.

Realizing that, if Dexter was to actually see Mr. Mouse, he might try to get Mr. Mouse, resulting in a much bigger problem for me, I let Dexter back into the house. A few minutes later, Mr. Mouse reappeared. I was starting to freak out. I didn’t know what do to.

After looking around the walls shared by both the garage and the house, and determining there was no way for Mr. Mouse to find his way into the house, because, ya know, I’m a damn expert on finding teeny, tiny little holes and mouse entryways, I decided MusicMan and I would just have to deal with the issue the followng morning. I consoled myself with the fact that Mr. Mouse probably wouldn’t try to enter the house, because the telltale scent of dog would ensure understanding that it was an inhospitable territory for a mouse, and instead would intelligently decide to find his way out of the garage. I shut off the garage lights, went in the house, and texted MusicMan to beware ‘cause there was a big, bad mouse in our garage. My main concern wasn’t so much the mouse getting into the house, but instead, the mouse crawling up into MusicMan’s nice warm car and wreaking havoc by chewing on wires or something.

After a brief lecture to Lulu and Dexter about how we were at war with Mr. Mouse and they must warn mommy if the enemy tried to infringe on our territory, I went to bed. Even though I was pretty sure neither dog understood me too well since they both just stared at me, occasionally tilting their heads as though they were trying to understand, or at the very least, pay attention, I felt comfortable enough (read: was too exhausted to care about the mouse's possible actions and motives) to go to sleep.

The next morning, I showed MusicMan where I’d seen Mr. Mouse, and MusicMan went out to purchase a couple mouse traps. We’d decided he would buy a couple live traps, if they weren’t too expensive, because we didn’t want to kill Mr. Mouse simply because he’d had the misfortune of stumbling into our garage and not being able to find a way out. The big box hardware store MusicMan went to didn’t have live traps, so he settled on these:

Photo via

The guy at the store told him that these traps likely wouldn’t kill the mouse unless it was trapped for so long that it starved to death. Even though the box had that kill guarantee on it, MusicMan reasoned that we’d check the traps often enough to avoid killing a mouse by starvation, so he purchased the two-pack and setup the traps as soon as he got home. He put one close to the sensor I’d seen Mr. Mouse standing on and the other on the opposite end of the garage, by our garbage can.

Two hours later, as he was leaving to run an errand, he saw that the trap by the garage door sensor had been sprung. Upon inspection, he found that the trap did, indeed, contain a mouse. Sadly, the mouse was dead.

MusicMan came into the house to tell me that we’d caught Mr. Mouse, he wasn’t as little as I’d thought he was, and the guy at the hardware store lied because Mr. Mouse was most definitely dead.

Well, what can I say? War is brutal. It isn’t easy, and it’s never pretty.

I realized, were this a post-apocalyptic world, we’d probably have saved Mr. Mouse's carcass instead of throwing him, trap and all, into the garbage (which would, thankfully, be taken away in a coule days). In a post-apocalyptic world, we’d have to rely on eating mice and bugs for sustenance, assuming they somehow survived the apocalypse too. That’s not a life I want to live. Having to fight, every single day, simply to survive is a scary proposition. I think that’s why I disliked “The Road” so much. It forced me to think about unpleasant, scary things that I didn’t want to think about.

Thankfully, for now at least, the war seems to be over. The other trap remains in position, unsprung, which is a very good sign that our enemies have gotten the mesage that this is our territory. But, a good warrior knows never to let her guard down; the enemy could strike again when it's least expected. And we remain at the ready.