The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 169: A Mouse in the House

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

That was particularly hard to find.

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This is the way I heard it. 12.15 a.m. An old man sits in a dark house, sipping tea and watching cartoons. He ought to be in bed with his wife, a beautiful woman, half his age, but he's restless and can't sleep. So he does what he always does

when the insomnia drives him from his bed. He makes a cup of tea and spends a little quality time with his favorite cat and mouse. So far it's been a rough evening. for Tom. In this episode alone, the poor cat has been shot, stabbed, drowned, poisoned, electrocuted, decapitated, eviscerated, driven into the ground with the telephone pole, and smashed in the face with a shovel. Twice. The old man delights in the cat's every misfortune brought about by his nemesis, the ever-resourceful mouse called Jerry. He admires the mouse

immensely. Smaller and weaker than his adversary, Jerry nevertheless prevails in almost every encounter, humiliating the big cat time and time again. The old man can help but giggle when Jerry crushes Tom's head in a window, severs his fingers in a door, stuffs his tail into a hot waffle iron, drops a refrigerator onto his head, and then ties him to a rocket that explodes in space. The old man likes the explosions, best of all. In the next room, his young wife is worried about her husband. He's not easing into his early retirement with grace. Once the CEO of a global corporation, he now seems adrift, anxious.

He's impatient with the children, short with the staff, and no longer desirous of her womanly charms. She doesn't know how to help him or what to say, so she lies there, alone, listening to a man twice her age, chortle, and guffal at the antics of a clever mouse and the hapless cat who just can't seem to catch him. 12.20 a.m. Tom is preparing to lie down for a nap in a hammock, but Jerry is already there, snoozing away. The old man watches, rapt. There's room. for two, but he knows the cat will never share that hammock with the mouse. Mm-mm. No way. The battle begins when Tom unhooks one side of the hammock from the tree and lowers it into a pond.

Jerry, still sleeping, slides off the end and into the water where he nearly drowns. It's funny stuff. But Jerry isn't laughing. He will not be bullied. So he waits for Tom to settle into the hammock. with a glass of lemonade. Then he attacks with lightning speed, flipping the hammock upside down,

sending the unsuspecting cat face first into the ground with such force the glass goes through his mouth and out the back of his head. The old man laughs and applauds. There's no blood, of course, which is disappointing. But the violence is beautifully executed, wildly imaginative, and perfectly choreographed. with a symphonic score that accentuates the action.

This was part of the attraction, obviously. The old man had an eye for art, and the artistry of Tom and Jerry was simply unparalleled. But mostly, he just appreciated a good game of cat and mouse, and nobody played it better than these two. 1225 a.m. Jerry is running as fast as he can from a cat with a drinking glass stuck in his skull. He's about to be cornered when he spies a lawnmower over by the barn. He sprints towards it as the

violins swell and the timpities pound with an angry cat hot on his heels. In a twinkling, the mouse fires up the mower and pushes it toward Tom. It's an ingenious counter move that sends the terrified cat running backwards across the lawn and into the hammock, which spins him around several times, trapping him like a fly and a spider web. What happens next is not the most violent thing the old man has ever seen, but it's right up there. Tom is completely helpless when Jerry pushes the lawnmower over his tail. Slowly, the cat is sucked into the whirling blades along with the hammock.

In moments, everything is sliced to ribbons and the remains of poor Tom. are transformed into a strand of accordion-style cat-shaped figures stretched between two trees where there used to be a hammock. 1229 a.m. The old man, who wasn't really as old as he looked, is laughing so hard at the cat's demise he doesn't hear the other cats, the ones creeping along the cement walk, two floors below him. Nor does he hear them enter his home.

and slowly climb his steps. Personally, I like to think the last thing he ever heard was the sound of Porky Pig saying, That's all, folks. It's possible, you know, because even though Tom and Jerry was a Hannah-Barbera production and the old man's favorite, the CIA also discovered lots of loony tunes on his computer,

along with a collection of Mr. Bean skits, a series of videos on how to crochet, and the contacts of a few other mass murderers who enjoyed killing innocent Americans. It's true. Crochet videos, probably for Amal, the loyal wife, who took a bullet in the leg that night trying to save her husband's life, the worthless life of a mouse on the lamb, who could no longer outfox the big cats who would come to settle the score. May 2nd, 2011, Zero Dark 30. The time in Abbottabad when the cats of Sealed Team 6 dropped in to exterminate a rodent called Osama bin Laden. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.

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