You never know how brave you really are until you discover that you are sharing your vehicle with a mouse. A really big mouse. Which you "found" because he sat on your foot while you were accelerating to reach the posted speed limit of 50 miles per hour. And he chose to sit on your accelerator foot.

As far as driving goes, I’m kind of a late bloomer. I’ve had my license for three years and the majority of my driving experience consists of commuting, along with several panicked trips to Plymouth and Manchester for chorus practice. During these three years, I’ve had four cars.

My first car, Gladys, was stolen for a joyride one night while I was at work and found crashed in the parking lot of an apartment complex by the Lowell police. A month or two later, Mabel was taken out of commission by a driver who ran a red light and plowed into me. Daisuke lasted for two and a half years before succumbing to a small internal meltdown.

And now, in the fourth car (which has yet to be named), I have a mouse.

After the mouse sat on my foot, I managed (rather calmly, given the circumstances) to pull off to the side of the road. I scrambled out of the car and did what anyone would do in that kind of situation: I dug out my cell phone and called my mommy.

We laughed about the situation for a few minutes and then tried to figure out what on earth to do next. Because really, what do you do? Call Animal Control? Call a mechanic? Mom suggested I check under the seats to see if the mouse was still there and open all the doors to give him a chance to escape if he was.

So there I am, by the side of Route 13, in my fake fur coat and fashionable leggings-and-dress ensemble, banging on my backseat with a flashlight and yelling, "Mousie, get out of my car!" No one stopped to help me, but I can’t really blame them because once I got fed up with the flashlight, I started brandishing my ice scraper.

Five minutes of attempting to forcibly drive the mouse out of my car and five minutes of sitting quietly and praying the mouse would leave of its own accord produced an astonishing lack of mouse. Mom and I decided that the mouse had probably slipped out one of the other doors when I wasn’t looking, and I shakily ventured back into my car for Teresa’s Commute, Take 2. I’m not afraid of mice - too many Disney movies growing up, I suppose - but I am afraid of rabies.

I made it another three miles before I happened to glance in my rearview mirror. There, waddling back and forth along my back windowledge and wondering why its winter home had suddenly become a mobile home, was a sizeable mouse. It might’ve been a chipmunk, but I was so preoccupied with keeping an eye on the mouse and finding a safe place to pull over without crashing that I completely forgot to check for distinctive markings.

I called Mom again. We decided that the only thing to do at this point was for her to come meet me and follow close behind me while I drove my car and the mouse back home. She would then give me a ride to work, as neither of us could be sure how the mouse would react to the highway.

I called my boss (our executive editor) and let him know that I would be late for work and explained why. He burst out laughing and said, "The strangest things happen to you, don’t they?" Thankfully, he knows me well enough to know that odd things do happen to me on a fairly regular basis, especially when it comes to my car(s), and that I’m not the kind of person who’s given to making lame excuses for being late.

The mouse situation is still unresolved. We tried to solve the problem humanely at first, with Mom putting our cat in my car to see if she would chase the mouse away. Unfortunately, it rained for most of the day, so Mom had to carry the cat outside and put her in the car.

Cleo has never done well with cars. They make her carsick and they also remind her of the vet, which leads to feline incontinence in self-defense. She didn’t do anything to my car, thankfully, but she wasn’t inclined to hang around and hunt for mice. She gave Mom a Look that said, "It’s raining. I was warm and snuggly on the couch. What is wrong with you?", hopped out of the car, and went back inside. Mom gave it three tries and then gave up.

After that, we unhappily resorted to mouse poison. I currently have an open box of D-Con riding shotgun (and will, most likely, until something happens to this car and I have to get another one), but I think the mouse may have already left to find a quieter winter abode. My Monday morning commute was probably too much for him.