Eureka!

   I needed to find an item.  There was a time limit on it.  I knew where the item normally was, but with a visitor coming, I had rather hastily moved some of the clutter into temporary storage.  I can't remember where I put this particular item.  I spent 2 days searching, looking into all the likely places I might have stashed it, and lacking success, I went on to look into a great many places where I know I would never have put it.  Apparently it ceased to exist, no luck anywhere.
  Oh, we do have storage space in the area that was built as a garage, and later remodeled into a family room, with ping pong table, piano, and other stuff.  But we passed through that stage of life and the room became a collection area for the belongings of several family members when their homes were broken up.  The random collection of storage cartons and bins, thanks to a generous gift, gave way to 5 very nice stainless steel shelving units, each with 5 shelves. Naturally, the random arrangement prevailed once again, and the shelf units became filled with cartons and storage boxes of various items with no particular order of contents.  A mini-hoard of sorts.
    I tried to call up a logical location for the lost item.  I could find it nowhere, after I convinced myself that I had looked in  all the places where I could logically have stashed it, and also into remote areas where I knew I never would have put it.  I'm usually very good at retrieving lost items, because I do admire organization, but have lately fallen far short of achieving it.
   In my time of searching, I detected--Horrors----traces of mouse presence. The mice have been few and far between this year, nothing like last year. And when the exterminator came this year to de-ant the foundation under  that room, he said the substance used may well deter mice.  Even though the mouse evidence may have been from before, I saw what I saw, so I set a trap I'd just bought at Lowe's, and reminded myself to check it regularly as it was in an area not well visited.
   Early this morning, I woke up with the lost item still preying on my mind.  One more attempt, I told myself, "Start over.  Pretend you're going to put that item away for a while, and just walk out there and do it."  So I walked out into that cold spare storage room to a place I'd already looked, of course. In vain.  But in front of that space, a box was on the floor. I knew it hadn't been there yesterday.  And in the space where it had been, totally in view, lay the missing item.  One box had concealed the other, apparently.  I looked at  the nearby shelf where I had positioned the trap.  The trap had sprung, and enclosed the remains of a mouse, of a dark brown variety.
      I don't know what goes on out there at night under cover of cold and darkness. The mouse the cat, the trap. All players, and their story remains untold.