I'm a Veteran, and for many years I've been having nightmares of things I've been through. I take hand fulls of pills every day to control the flashbacks and to sleep. I don't really like to take pills and occasionally I do forget with no ill effects. Living alone doesn't help in this regard. It only serves to make any dreams I might have, just that much more vivid and realistic.

For years now, an elite squad of highly trained death dealing operatives has been spraying my home and setting out bait to control the elusive Palmetto Bug and the invading neighborhood Wild Mice. Recently there has been a serious change where the mice are concerned.

Every time my hired death dealing pest control people arrive, they fill the mouse bait tray and each month the bait vanishes but the mouse population seems to remain. This understandably bothers me no small amount. I now have vivid dreams about an evolving race of bait resistant super mice populating my neat little flat. Compared to these new dreams, the military stuff was a Sunday School picnic.

In the morning I get up and meander out to the kitchen to brew my morning coffee, knowing full well I'll find more evidence there have been mice prowling my kitchen. I can't help but wonder what they are after. I try to keep all my dry goods in sealed glass or metal containers.

Naturally, there are dreams where the super mice swarm from their hiding places and drag a can from my larder. Then, acting as one mouse, they haul the can to the can opener and open the can for their dinner. Of course, I know this can't be because I never find any open cans laying about in the morning. Yet each morning I find a little more of the bait gone from the bait tray.

The implications are positively terrifying, I could be breeding this evolved race of super mice right here in my Mount Perry Kitchen. Once their ranks have swollen they will flood out of my building and move into other homes and shops in the neighborhood. From there into the whole State of Florida, then on to world conquest. Naturally, as the one responsible for unleashing this hoard of ravenous rodents on the world, I would become a marked man to the Rodent Control Industry.

I had to do something to at least try to limit the population of these super rodents to a reasonable number. As poisons seemed ineffective, I decided to try my hand at trapping them. My son seemed to have had reasonably good success with a kind of trap which captures multiple mice alive. Naturally, to actually see the evolving rodent would be something to talk about, so I borrowed his trap and baited it with a dab of peanut butter.

The next morning I found the peanut butter gone and the spring causing the trap to function completely unwound. Obviously, the wee beasties had figured out how to beat this contraption. And so, on to the next idea.

Spring traps have been favored by homeowners for many years. Perhaps this was the answer. In the local hardware store I found a device I didn't even need bait for. The mouse merely had to walk over the trap and it would snap shut leaving me with the grisly job of disposing of the dead body.

Being of strong heart, I set the trap under the sink and at the same time advised the cat if she didn't start earning her keep, I would relocate her to the street. Kitty just rolled over and indicated she wanted her belly rubbed.

Although the evidence pointed to the passage of many mice had been through my little flat, kitty as yet, has remained an ineffective rodent controller. Obviously, kitty was living the good life and saw no need to catch mice.

The little spring trap was completely ineffective, each morning it was sprung but there was no dead mouse to be found. After a week or so of dealing with the resetting of the trap, the thing snapped shut on my finger. This was obviously not the answer and I had a multicolored finger to prove it. It was time to seek a bigger, better trap.

The next larger trap at the hardware store was a rat trap. Now, this was a fearsome looking thing. Not only was it larger but the spring was much harder to pull back to set. The store clerk told me if I had a rodent problem, this was definitely the answer.

Again, I found the trap sprung but no dead body. I reasoned the trap was so strong it had cut the little critter in half and if I just searched further I'd find the two halved. A diligent search yielded nothing, not even blood.

The clerk at the hardware store scratched his head as I explained my problem again. This time he brought me a small Jaw type trap. He assured me the thing would clamp on the leg or snout of any animal and remain shut because of a special locking system the doomed creature could never figure out.

Indeed, the thing was a formidable looking device. As the jaws sprang shut, spring loaded steel rings moved upwards from the jaw hinges keeping the jaws shut until pressure was applied to both sides of the trap at the same time.

I tried trap after trap but nothing worked, the super mice were still living under my kitchen counter. Even the monestrous Bear Trap I'd bought clanked shut in the middle of the night with nothing in it. I was now out of ideas. Cage traps, snap traps, poisons, jaw traps and even bear traps had failed to deal with the super mice.

It was time for drastic measures. I got out my WWI Trench Sweeper Shotgun and made ready to spend the night on the kitchen table. I set the bear trap so I'd be sure the noise of the trap snapping shut would awaken me, loaded my shot gun with six rounds of 000 Buck Shot, set up some pillows for my own comfort and settled in for a long night of watching the bear trap.

Sometime around midnight, there was a loud "CLANK" from under the kitchen sink. I snapped on the flash light, I'd taped to the shotgun, and fired all six shots in the direction of the bear trap with deadly accuracy.

Leaping from the table top and snapping on the light, I found myself standing along side my bed. The whole thing had been a vivid dream. Not wanting to believe I could have such a terrible dream I went out into the kitchen and looked under the kitchen sink at the bait tray the Pest Control Operative had just left under there a few days before. It was half empty, — or half full, which ever way your mind works.