I came across Homer Smarter stopped by an abandoned barn over by Pickaway. He was squatting down beside his old farm truck with a wastebasket. My reporting instincts alerted, I pulled off the road and walked back to him. He took a towel off the top of the wastebasket and grinned into it, saying, “dumb mousey, dumb mousey.”

“What you got there?” I queried. I reached into my camouflage jacket and turned on my trusty tape recorder.
“Better mousetrap,” he said.
“Doesn’t look like one,” I commented.
“Now that’s just the thing,” said Homer. “Fools ‘em every time.”
Homer tipped the wastebasket and a tiny mouse ran out, looked around, and hightailed it for the tall weeds.

Things got friendly after that, the way they often do out around Pickaway. He was on the bench in front of the New Pickaway Store and had a soda. Homer told me his story.

“Well, naturally we got mice everywhere. My wife’s allergic to cats, you know, so we don’t got no natural defense. And she don’t always clean up that good.” We both waved at a coupe of pretty ladies going in the store.

“So I tried a mousetrap and caught one but the sight of it in the mornin’ made her sick Then I got this idea. I balanced a big knife on the counter and put some peanut butter on the handle, and dumb mousey can’t resist peanut butter, you know, so out he goes and then, plop, into the wastebasket. And it’s just high enough he can’t jump out. So I drive ‘em all out here and let ‘em go. There’s probably a lively mousey community in that old abandoned barn.

I congratulated Homer on his ingenuity and asked him if I could share it with my readers and said sure. Then I went right home and rummaged around in the knife drawer looking for a cleaver to cantilever.

– Larry Berger, Sinks Grove, WV Correspondent. LBSPY #66, June 2015.