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“Oh, they’ll be charged, and appear before the judge in the morning. I hope they’ll go away for a long time. Did you say they fired off a shot?”

“Yes, to scare away the mice,” said Brutus.

“And did it work?”

“It did,”’ said Harriet. “Though now I wonder where they all ran off to.”

Suddenly a piercing cry rent the air. It seemed to come from underneath us, and as we all ran down the stairs and into the basement, I saw that a sizable hole had been dug by the bullet one of the thugs had fired. Through the hole we could clearly see Marge, standing in her own basement next door, and screaming her head off.

The fact that she was surrounded by a swirling sea of rodents probably had something to do with that.

Chapter 23

When the commotion next door had died down a little, Marge decided to clear the table. No one was going to finish dinner now, and she liked to run a tight and especially a clean ship. And she’d just turned on the dishwasher and moved into the living room when she thought she heard a strange sound. Almost as if some animal was screaming up a storm in the basement. So she’d taken the broom and had pulled the little string that worked the light, and had moved down into the basement one step at a time. At first she didn’t see a thing, but then, as she looked around, suddenly she saw that what she thought was the floor was actually a carpet consisting entirely of mice!

The carpet was undulating, and seemed to cover the whole basement floor!

And that’s when she started screaming her head off.

“Mom!” Odelia called out.

Marge searched for the source of the sound, and saw that there was now a new hole in the basement wall, opposite the one where Boyd Baker’s body had been found. This hole connected to Odelia’s basement, and her daughter was saying something that she couldn’t quite catch, as the mice were screeching up a violent storm at her feet.

So she added to the chorus and screamed some more.

Then two things happened: her mother came stomping down, carrying what looked like an old shotgun, and fired off a shot. The shot went wide and hit the wall, creating yet another hole.

“Mom! Stop shooting!” Marge yelled over the noise of the screeching mice.

And then her husband Tex followed in his mother-in-law’s footsteps and when he saw the spectacle went a little white around the nostrils and said, “Oh, my Lord!”

“This is the first stage, Tex,” said Mom. “See? It’s always the rats that show the way. And they’re showing us we need to build a bunker down here.”

“It’s not rats!” Marge yelled. “It’s mice!”

“Same difference,” said Mom. “Mice lead the way. Noah knew it, and so did Hitler.”

What Hitler had to do with anything, Marge didn’t know, but what she did know was that if someone didn’t make these mice behave, she was going to freak out to such an extent it would be as if a nuclear bomb had exploded right then and there!

Tex, who’d disappeared, now returned carrying a spray can. He directed the nozzle at the mice and pressed the button. The smell of lavender filled the air.

“Is that my deodorant?” asked Marge.

“I didn’t find anything else!”

“Mice love deodorant,” said Mom. “Just look at those little buggers enjoying the heck out of that scent of lavender and pine.”

Odelia, who’d made the trip through the hedge in record time, now also joined the party.

“I don’t believe this,” said Marge. “With four cats between us you would think the house would be completely mouse-free, right?”

“The mice tricked them,” said Odelia as she studied the horror scene with fascination.

“They did what?”

“Harriet and Brutus tried to reason with them and they tricked Harriet into sticking her head in one of their holes and she got stuck. She had her head stuck inside that wall all afternoon and part of the evening.”

“Poor thing,” said Mom.

“Poor thing! She should have killed that mouse, not try to reason with it!” Marge cried.

“Mice are God’s creatures, too, and they have every right to live and thrive.”

“They can live and thrive someplace else.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Tex, whose bright idea of using deodorant on the mice had fizzled out. “How do we get rid of these critters in a humane and efficient way?”

“Humane, my ass!”’ said Marge. “I want them out of here. Now!”

Four cats now descended on the scene: Max, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus, and stopped to stare at the seething mass of mouse.

“Why didn’t the gunshot scare them off this time?” asked Brutus.

“They’re quick learners,” said Max. “They’re probably used to gunshots already.”

“Oh, dear,” said Harriet. One of the mice said something that Marge couldn’t understand and Harriet snapped, “I told you to beat it, and now look what you’ve done. They’re going to massacre the whole lot of you, and it’ll all be your fault!”

The mouse said something else that escaped Marge, and then Brutus said,“It’s out of our paws now, Molly. I’m sorry. You brought this on yourself.”