I did not say "eek!"

Yet another rodent decided that our home is cozier than anything he or she could procure in our neighbor’s houses or in the copious grass and forest lands that surround us. I found this out while I was doing dishes the other day. In my peripheral vision, I saw a tiny black shape zoom across the floor inches from my bare toes and disappear underneath the cabinets.

All right, I let out a sound. Loud enough to bring husband away from the television.

“What?” he said.

“Mouse. Damn it.”

He grins. “You said ‘eek.’”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did. You sounded like one of those ladies in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Just set the damned trap, OK?”

And Mr. or Ms. Mouse was in it the next afternoon.

Husband discovers this and holds it up to my face. I do not want a Have-A-Heart trap filled with frightened mouse and his or her excrement so close to my sensory organs. “Get that away from me.”

He does that grinning thing away. Little bastard. “Look how tiny he is.”

“I see that.”

“This tiny little thing made you say ‘eek!’”

“Just take care of it, OK?”

“Taking care of it” does not mean anything Sopranos-related in this household. We drive the mouse to a secret undisclosed location at least a mile from the house, and not near any other houses (because that would be unneighborly) and set it free.

“It’s too cold out,” he says.

“Whatdya mean, ‘too cold?’ We have this conversation every year. He’s got fur. He can burrow. How do you think they survive the winter?”

“By coming into our house,” he says.

I have visions of last winter, and the seven winters before that, when he envisioned setting up a terrarium for all wayward mice, and keeping it in the laundry room until Spring. I love my husband for his soft, kind heart, but-- “We’re not keeping him,” I say firmly.

“Because of the mouse poop.”

“Something like that,” I say.

He sighs, and speculates how he can get the little guy into the “holding pen” we had from our former hamster: a plastic tub about as big as a shoebox, where you put the little critter to keep him out of trouble while you clean the Habitrail. “But last time I tried that, he got out.”

“So just leave him in the trap.”

He looks at me like I’m Cruela DeVil. “Without any food or water?”

I sigh. “Fine. Whatever.” I know I’ve lost this one. Let him do what he wants. If the mouse gets out, then he can clean all the poop out from behind everything on the kitchen counters. Again.

Last night, as I’m getting into bed, he comes in, looking all proud of himself. “I did it. I made a kind of tunnel with a Zip-lock bag and shuttled him right into the box.”

And in the morning, I saw it. The box, covered with a towel to keep him extra-toasty, with half a Dixie cup filled with water. And the black back of what I can only assume was our freeloader, burrowed into the wood shavings.

When he wakes up, he comes into my writing room, grinning that grin again. “You saw the mouse?”

“I saw the mouse.”

The grin turns more smug. “Did you see how small he is?”

I don’t turn away from the screen. “I saw how small he is.”

He picks up the pen that’s sitting on my computer table. “He’s only half the size of this pen, all stretched out, and you said, ‘Eek!’”

“Enough with the eek. You’re getting him out of here today, right?”

“Yeah, sure. I just didn’t want to do it last night because I didn’t want to wake you up by opening the garage door.

Yeah. Right. And as he left the room in search of coffee (and probably to stare at his friend), I smiled.