We have a mouse, and he is Herman. Rhymes with Vermin. One night I saw him peek out from under the stove. He saw me and retreated. "Ope, sorry, never mind there, see ya."

Herman made the mistake of popping out when my wife was around. "We have a mouse," she said the next day. "Can you get something?"

The "something" would be a trap. They come in a few varieties.

Old-style instant dispatch. Put a piece of cheese on one end, mouse takes it, SNAP! Mouse joins the choir eternal. Painless, they say, but we don't have a lot of data from the mouse perspective. It's dependable, but you end up with an obvious dead thing in need of disposal.

New-style anti-mouse boxes. All the mouse-ending action goes on inside, and you can shake it out without looking and pretend nothing happened. Good for the timid who do not want to confront the reality of mouse termination.

Live traps. These have a little tunnel and a trap, and when the mouse gets the cheese something drops down and seals him in, and boy, does he feel stupid. Should have seen this coming, right? Well, no; when you take a free piece of cheese at the grocery store, you don't expect a black cone to drop from the ceiling.

That's the one I got. I have a hard time killing anything with which I made eye contact.

When I put it together, I noticed the last line in the instructions: "Release mouse two miles from home."

Apparently if I drop off the mouse a mile and a half away, it'll find its way back. "Hey, there! Miss me, boss?"

Now I have to think about where I'm going to let Herman go. I called up a map and drew a two-mile-radius circle, looking for optimal mouse-release areas. I imagined a conversation with Herman as we drove to some park.

"You know I've got a wife," he'd say.

"Me, too. That's why you're alive."

"She's going to wonder where I went, that's all I'm saying. I didn't leave a note."

"Look. You're lucky. You get to squeak another day. You come in my house, you chew through the dog food bin, you pee all over the storage room. Most people would put out the ol' Victory spine-snappers, but I'm chauffeuring a rodent to a wooded copse. Think of it as a witness protection plan thing."

"Maybe you could take me to a pet store, drop me off with the hamsters? I could lie low, blend in."

"You're in no position to make requests, Herman. I know people who'd give you to a friend with snakes."

"So there's no snakes where you're taking me. No hawks or coyotes. Just me, the tall grass, and your clean conscience."

That's where I'd turn up the radio and stop talking.

So far he hasn't taken the bait, so we haven't had the conversation. I've checked the trap twice and it's empty. Herman could be a snob, and shredded stuff from the bag isn't sufficient. Any cave-aged Beaufort, my good man? Even a dab of white Stilton would be better than this ... this orange atrocity.

It's a fair point. Last meal as our guest, I should be generous. Maybe he was so insulted he left. If so, fine. I won't miss him.

And I'm sure he's the only mouse we have.