I am absolutely terrified of mice. It is beyond irrational. For the first time in over 26 years of marriage, we had a mouse in our house. I literally went to pieces. My initial scream of stark terror was followed by hours of sobbing. You'd have thought my life was over. I wish I was exaggerating. A known terrorist breaking into our house would have invoked less fear. At least I can envision myself taking on the terrorist...my hair is standing on end just thinking of catching a glimpse of that mouse again. It's a sad reality that a mouse could scare me more than a terrorist with a machine gun.

As flight attendants we are required to attend recurrent training every year. Since 9/11 we have had additional training on ways we could stop a terrorist attack. Situational awareness is key, and we are reminded of the various "weapons" we have at our disposal...scalding coffee to throw in their faces, oxygen bottles to bash their heads in with, fire extinguishers to squirt in their eyes, and various other objects you wouldn't ordinarily think of as weapons. We watch self-defense videos and even practice on a rubber dummy--punching his face, kicking his privates and poking his eyes out. I get all tensed up picturing and practicing all the ways I would hurt him. I feel empowered, really believing that a terrorist would rue the day he ever thought about blowing up my airplane. We are shown a video re-enactment of a foiled terrorist attack on an Israeli airline. At the end of the video, the Israeli flight attendants that were solely responsible for thwarting the attack are interviewed. They tell of running their carts down the aisle and blasting into him. As an aside, that's one thing I can't picture doing. Their airplanes must have much wider aisles than ours because I can't keep from bashing into every armrest, not to mention the unfortunate shoulders, knees and elbows that I clip on my way up the aisle. These Israeli flight attendants know they are in a life or death situation. The last lines of their testimony are (in heavily accented English), "after we subdued him...we took him out." Took. Him. Out. They killed him! Can you even imagine? No getting "lawyer-ed up" for a long drawn out trial, no referring to him as the alleged terrorist. Nope, instant justice. What's up with this alleged business anyway? Dozens of eye witnesses watch a guy shoot and kill people and he's only the alleged shooter? A guy ignites an explosive device in his underpants and he's only an alleged terrorist? Puh-leeze!

Anyway, back to the appallingly speedy little creature that turned my beloved home into a house of horrors. Are mice even capable of doing anything but darting around with lightning speed? Bob went into serious hunt and kill mode (he who doesn't even like killing flies). He chased that mouse into the wee hours of the night without success. He went online and researched their habits and all the different ways he could "take them out." He was at Home Depot as soon as their doors opened and purchased close to a hundred dollars worth of traps. Mercifully, the next night his mission was accomplished and we haven't seen or caught any since. The happy result of all this drama is that I've never felt more like a damsel in distress rescued by her knight in shining armor nor have I ever loved Bob more.