For my last column of the year, I decided not to write about saving money or investments. If you have questions about these things, feel free to e-mail me. Instead, my conscience demands that I write a column telling the story of the mouse I found in my room.

I had just returned home and walked into my room, only to find something mysterious on the floor. It looked like a small pile of lint or maybe a large cotton ball. I reached down to pick it up when I suddenly realized that it was a baby mouse, munching on crumbs on the floor of my room.

My first instinct was to scream like a girl and run away. But men aren’t allowed to do that, so I just stood there. Usually a mouse will run away when you get close to it, but this mouse seemed comfortable with my presence. I watched it nibble away while I thought of a plan to get it out of my room. I called my roommate in to assess the situation.

As we stood there and stared at the mouse, dumbfounded, we devised a plan to move it outside. The plan was to get it into a box using my TV remote and to put it outside without harming it. My roommate got a box and I moved it into the box with my remote and bolted to the door. Then, without thinking, I did something that I would regret for the rest of my life.

Instead of gently setting the box down and letting the mouse run free, I flung the mouse out of the box and onto the concrete sidewalk. When I heard the sound of the mouse hitting the pavement, I immediately knew what I had done. I ran over to the mouse, hoping that it had survived the fall.

I looked down and saw that the mouse was convulsing. I felt terrible and had no idea what to do. I couldn’t drive the mouse to the hospital, so I did the first thing that came to mind.

I went to get some cheese.

I ran inside, came back out and sprinkled some cheddar on the sidewalk next to it. This did absolutely nothing. A tear trickled down my cheek as I realized the pain I unknowingly inflicted on this poor mouse.

Immediately after this my neighbor came outside. She is a beautiful Southern girl and I thought maybe she had some experience dealing with these types of situations growing up on a farm or wherever she is from. I explained the situation to her hoping she could help. When I finished telling her the story, she picked up the mouse by its tail and threw it against the brick wall. I was horrified. I told her that was the cruelest thing I have ever seen and she giggled and went inside. I looked down at the mouse and it had stopped moving. I went inside, feeling terrible.

The next day, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked down and saw what appeared to be a mouse. Maybe my neighbor put the mouse in my apartment as some sort of sick joke. Later questioning revealed that this was not the case. This mouse had a heroic will to survive.

Sadly I did not want it surviving in my apartment, so I put it in a box and took it outside. It could not move, but was still alive. I learned from my mistake the day before and took it out to the woods and gently set it free. I screamed with tears running down my face to “Run away!” but the mouse just stayed there, paralyzed.

I knew something had to be done. This mouse could not survive on its own anymore and would probably never heal. He has been in pain for over a day now and if I left it in the woods, it would probably starve, freeze to death, or be eaten by something. I had no choice but to put it out of its misery. After a debate over the most painless way to kill it, I decided to run it over with a car. Free Kevorkian.