Ode to a Good Disc

Ladies and gentlemen, did you ever hear
the tale 'bout a disc that saved his owner dear
from the rodent menace of the year
in a Turkish town called Trabzon?

If you haven't heard, you unlucky fool,
recall Alexis who taught English at that school
called KTU with an Olympic pool...
Yes, she's the one it's based on.

The disc wasn't young, but it wasn't old
used for Ultimate Frisbee in warm or cold
at least its end was rather bold
...squashed a mouse when it was stepped on.

The post for this past week (and a half) would be incomplete without some words about the mouse that used to live in Ali's room. I say "used to" because a few nights ago, one of her precious Ultimate Frisbee discs was sacrificed to eliminate the menace.

This mouse was discovered by Ali about a week or so after we moved in...so it's been there a while. We actually nicknamed this mouse Houdini and Mighty Mouse because, on numerous occasions, it did the impossible:

1. Disappeared from being cornered under a suitcase
2. Survived for over a week with NO FOOD when locked in Ali's bathroom
3. Ate copious quantities of rat poison and DID NOT DIE
4. Avoided stepping on sticky traps for over a week

For weeks, Ali has been plagued by this little guy. She kept every smidgen of food in her refrigerator and would have to come to my room to eat. She also came to my room to sleep in the extra bed when the mouse would make ridiculous amounts of noise at night. We developed a knocking system on the wall between our rooms for "mouse alerts," and responding to these calls could happen at any time of day. Well, the point of all of this is that even Houdini met his end...and so did this mouse.

A couple of nights ago, Ali used her room phone to call mine in the middle of the night. I immediately responded to this most urgent of mouse alerts. When I arrived in her room, she told me that the mouse had finally made a mistake, stepping on the very edge of a sticky trap, but he had almost gotten free. So, she had covered the mouse and the paper with one of her precious flying discs and was weighing it down with a water bottle. Had I been more coherent at this time, I would have thought to have taken a picture, because it would look really good right about now. You'll just have to use your imagination.

The mouse was under there, all right, squeaking every once in a while. Ali asked if I would watch the disc and its prisoner while she went to get the night shift guy at the reception desk. I said, of course, and dutifully waited until she returned with him. He doesn't speak English, but he's super sweet and had helped us before with the rat poison issue. With our broken Turkish and many charades, we communicated where the mouse was. The question now was what to do with it. It would escape if he just took the disc off, he gestured to us. And then he made the fatal inquiry.

Could he squash the mouse by stepping on the disc?

I'll spare you the gruesome details, but after a deep breath, we respectfully turned our backs. Afterward, that mouse was definitely deceased. An ex-mouse, like an ex-parrot, Monty Python style. But the glue of the sticky trap was all over the disc...as was....well, you get it.

And, thus, a good disc gave its life for the life of Ali. She now lives in a mouse-free zone. And that disc, from her summer in Cleveland, lives on in our hearts. Cleveland disc...we salute you.

Whene'er they say, "No heroes left!"
When of good the world seems so bereft
whether your throwing hand is right or left
Remember...Cleveland disc is number one.