fter school, I put on the Body Protector and stomped around the backyard. Sam stomped without one. This was triply brilliant. For one, since the table incident I am not allowed to go roaming. For two, since my mom was still steaming, the yard was better than the house. For three, she couldn't hear our conversation.

“The mouse has been on the loose for twenty hours,” I said.

“It will come back when it gets hungry,” Sam said. “Maybe faster if we add an Oreo to its Cocoa Puffs.”

When one hour was up I wrote in our log:

Melonhead has 2 mosquito bites and a lot of sweat. Sam has 6 bites but not so much sweat. We estimate that the Protector works 2/3 of the time. A snafu is that it's hot to wear in spring and summer and there are no mosquitoes in the winter.

Sam wrote:

Not a total flop.

“Why did you boys purposely tempt mosquitoes?” my mom asked while she painted our bites with sticky pink lotion that's supposed to take itches away. It doesn't work.

“Reinventors have to test their reinventions,” I said.

“Do they have to retest their mother's patience?” she asked.

“They don't mean to,” I told her. My patience was fine but my mind was going nutty. Every time anything moved I thought it was the mouse.

We used up the good Band-Aids last week when I scuffed my elbows while I was practicing stomach crawling in case I'm ever in the army. Now I was covered with Elmo and Cookie Monster. They were left over from when I was a kid. Sam peeled his off on the walk home.

Luckily my parents had to go to a reception for the Florida orange growers who were visiting Washington, D.C.

“Stay out as long as you can,” I told them.

Julianne Meany was my babysitter. She should be named Julianne Nicey. She is not a person who falls apart when a boy gets in a situation with a mouse.

“Mice like kitchens,” she said.

“Oh, no!” I said. “That's my mom's main room.”

“Got a flashlight?” Julianne asked.

“Penlight, regular, the kind that you wind and never needs batteries, or the big emergency one?” I asked. “I have all of those in my room.”

“This is an emergency so get that one,” she said. “And bring the penlight so we can look in nooks. Mice enjoy nooks.”

Julianne looked first. “This is the only fridge I ever saw that doesn't have dust balls under it,” she said.

“I'll climb on top and look behind it,” I said.

“I'll get you a chair,” she said.

“That's okay,” I said. “I've been climbing refrigerators since I was three and a half.”

We had no good luck with that or with the dishwasher or the bread box.

Julianne had to take a break to have a long talk on the phone about ninth grade with someone who I think is her boyfriend. That was when I was struck with the idea. I ran upstairs to my room and unwound the string from the automatic door shutter I built last summer. I didn't mind taking it apart. It turned out to be more of an automatic door creaker than a shutter.

I tied the string around Cobra's stomach and held him so we were snake eyeballs to boy eyeball. “Snake,” I said, “I am depending on you. If you are as good a hunter as Mrs. Timony said, you'll hunt down your dinner but fast.”

I held his string and put him on the kitchen floor. “Lead the way,” I said.

Cobra headed for a cabinet. I followed. “Humans use two hundred muscles to take one step,” I told him. “I wonder how many muscles you use per slither?”

He must have wanted to show me because he zigzagged himself right out of the string and under the stove. He was about as fast as the speed of sound.

Julianne found me with my head on the floor. “I can only see with one eye because the space under the oven is not even as high as one Pez candy,” I said. “And now I have double trouble.”

“What's the problem?” Julianne asked.

“Snakes have no hips,” I said. “Or shoulders. And Cobra's last mouse was digested. I wish I'd realized that it takes some wider parts to keep a snake on a leash.”

Julianne sat on the floor and pulled up her knees so her chin could have a place to rest. “Getting the snake to track the mouse wasn't a bad idea,” she said.

That made me feel smarter. “How can I track both of them?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Julianne said.

I felt worse again.

Then she said, “If you can't find them, chances are your mom won't either.”

Just like that, my hope returned.

“You should tell your dad there are critters on the loose,” she said. “Get in bed. I'll tell your dad that you want him to come and say good night when he gets home.”

That was going to be a hard job considering I hadn't even gotten to tell him I was part owner of a snake.