We live in a house a hundred years old, with the century's worth of leaks and cracks and tears in the woodwork that even the chubbiest critter can finagle. Once or twice a year, usually when it's rainy and at the change of seasons, one of the humans living here will see a scampering shadow out of the corner of his eye. Hearts palpitate, requests are made for hotel rooms, walking on tiptoes commences and traps are set.

With the house once again mouse-free, I run through the kitchen singing, "Ding-dong, the witch is dead!" and we all return to walking with our entire soles on the floor.

We went through the whole drill again, an event that wouldn't necessarily be worthy of mention here except that it dovetailed with the escape of our hamster.

Sprinkles was the cutest little thing I ever saw. With his brown fur and chubby body and little peaked ears, he looked like a bear cub. During the day, when the kids were in school, I would go into my daughter's room and see little Spinky staring at me from the corner of the cage. And I would take him out, and we would play.

It wasn't me, but somebody failed to secure the trap door with the twisty tie, and Sprinkles got out. One night, my daughter came to me with a pale, stricken look on her face.

"Sprinkles is gone," she said.

"He can't be," I said. But when we went and looked, the trap door was sprung and even after digging through the cedar bedding, we could find no hamster.

We moved furniture and lifted boxes and pretty much tore the place apart, but found nothing. Those first few days, I hoped I'd catch a shadow out of the corner of my eye and see old Spinky emerging from under a sofa, but that didn't happen. Weeks passed, and we gave up hoping.

A few days ago, a great shriek could be heard during breakfast. Opening the drawer that holds the trash can, my husband saw a little shadow streaking by.

"Maybe it was Sprinkles!" my daughter said.

"Too skinny," my husband said and confirmed the arrival of our annual late-summer mouse. Later, I asked if he was certain it couldn't have been the intentional family pet and not an unintentional one, and he said he was sure enough. With the hamster still missing, we delayed setting a trap. During the day, I left the hamster cage open on my daughter's bedroom floor, in case Sprinkles still was nearby.

Then, after a time, we set a single trap in the kitchen, for the mouse, which apparently visited after hours.

My husband was away on business when the trap clapped shut. At breakfast that morning, I asked my son to peek around the counter to see if we'd caught anything.

"Yep," he said, with the nonchalance of someone announcing the newspaper was on the porch.

"Will you throw it away, please?" I asked.

"Forty bucks," he said. Let me tell you, it seemed like a bargain. But still.

"Ten," I said.

"Twenty," he countered.

"Fifteen," I said. He bit.

Two minutes later the mouse was in the trash outside. "You should have seen it," my son said. "It was so cute."

So was the hamster. There isn't much that separates an unwelcome rodent from a beloved one. In this case, we're glad to be rid of one, and still worried about the other.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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