A Retelling of the Cockamouse Tale

I admit it. I’m a How I Met Your Mother fanatic. Don’t worry. This isn’t a romance story (or I’m sorry, this isn’t a romance story). This is verifiable proof that the cockamouse is real.

This weekend I’m in Tulsa. I was supposed to meet with a potential supplier—Topeca coffee—but that fell through, unfortunately. Fortunately, I was staying with my good friend—we’ll call her Sprinkle—and we managed to fill up our time. I had previously done some work for her, and in repayment, she was going to list and ship all of my used books I was trying to offload. My bookcases are so heavily burdened I have run out of places to stack books, of which I could not possibly stop buying/borrowing/burglaring. I only brought two giant tote bags of books.

It bears mentioning that the previous night she found a spider in the apartment. I have full-fledged arachnophobia. She’s not much better. I’m way worse. Sprinkle had to coerce me from all the way across the room to within five feet of her and the spider so I could be on standby with a shoe in case her broom didn’t kill it. And then instead of whacking the hell out of the spider, I simply threw the shoe at it, screamed, and ran back to the other side of the room. She ended up picking up the shoe and stomping it to death. The next morning we saw Spiderman. (It was good. You should totally go see it.)

So that afternoon, after Spiderman made us want superhero boyfriends, we ran into a situation requiring a superhero boyfriend…or at the very least a boyfriend.

I was sitting on the couch working on Pinterest—a full-time occupation in my unemployed status—while Sprinkle pulled tome after tome from the depths of a truly cavernous black tote bag. With a gasp and a bang she dropped several novels at once.

“What is it?” I asked, but considerably more strident in tone than necessary. I had not forgotten the spider of last night.

“Okay! I’m done. It’s a spider. A huge spider.” She held up her fingers to indicate a near tarantula-sized monster that now lurked in the depths of the bag.

She didn’t have to say it out loud. We both knew after my cowardly behavior last night that it was my turn up to bat. I slowly placed my laptop on the couch beside me. Stood up. Tentatively approached the bag resting on the coffee table, which I swear was radiating evil or something. And timidly peeked into the shadow opening.

Nothing. I only saw books at the very bottom. I shook the top of the bag a little bit as I muttered about Andrew Garfield knowing what to do. Something truly giant ran out from under a book and up the side of the tote bag—directly toward me. I screamed and fell over Sprinkle in my mad scramble backward.

“Not a spider!”

“What?” (She was yelling at the top of her voice too.)

“Giant cockroach. Radioactively large cockroach. Oh my Lord. The cockamouse is real.”

Except I wasn’t laughing. I was near puking at the size of the thing. And while I’m not scared of cockroaches—I’d even had a considerably larger Moroccan cockroach riding around on me at the OKC zoo when I was a junior curator—this beast didn’t belong in my tote bag in Sprinkle’s apartment in Oklahoma. It belonged in a zoo. Or halfway around the world. Or in a lab. Cockroaches are gross, and I had a full case of the willies.

But still, it wasn’t a spider. So I could handle it. I could handle it. I could handle it. I repeated my new mantra as I sidled back up to the bag, poking at the side so it would scurry back to the bottom before I peered in once more. Sprinkle joined me.

“Here, let’s each take out a book—two. Two books.”

She pulled out two, shaking them quickly above the bag and stacking them. I jerked two out as if the bag was on fire. An idea I quickly latched on to.

“You know, we could just light the books. They’re flammable. A cockroach can survive a nuclear attack, not a fire, right?”

Sprinkle just stared at me, nonplussed.

“No? No? All right. No, yeah, you’re right.”

She pulled another book, so did I, and screamed. That thing had it out for me. It was charging up the side of the bag at my hand every time. I flapped my arms in fright.

“Maybe…maybe if we got the vacuum cleaner out…”

“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, let’s do that.” I tried to talk more quietly. We were in an apartment after all. Someone was going to call the cops. But really I was beginning to think that that would not be an overreaction. At the very least it needed other eye witnesses.

Sprinkle got the vacuum out and I had to take the attachment off the hose because there was no way that the cockamouse would fit in the small opening. That meant that the hose and my entire hand had to disappear into the bag to find the monster. It was hidden again. With the vacuum cleaner on, I shoved around books with the hose, poised to suck the sucker up. There was a flash of black. I thought I had him. I crowed in victory. And then he was there, by my hand, and I fell backwards on the vacuum cleaner, screaming like a loon once more, and took down Sprinkle and the vacuum with me. We lay in a pile regrouping.

“Okay, okay. I can do this. I’m not scared of cockroaches. It isn’t a spider. It’s not like it will bite me.”

Sprinkle gave me an even look. “Yeah, but it’s so big!”

At least she understood. She wasn’t laughing at my fright.

Shaking my hands to get the willies out, I stepped up to the bag of terror once more. Hidden again. That cockroach was wily! But I was determined he would meet his end. This time when he charged at me, I was ready, and for sure sucked him up. There would be no uncertainty though. I vacuumed all around that bag. Sprinkle’s vacuum cleaner has a clear canister, and she saw him in there. Scurrying through the dog hair (she has two pugs and a cat and I brought my two up for the weekend). We had caught him. And he’s still in her vacuum. We’re scared to dump it.

So if anyone has a good name for a cockamouse… leave a comment!