Mice Are Not Nice
We have mice and it's not nice. It's not only not nice, it's disgusting. It took us way too long to figure it out. We started finding these strange black rice-shaped things in our napkin drawer. I stopped putting napkins in the drawer or anything else and decided to wait and see. Then one day I discovered what looked like the remains of a tiny, haphazardly organized picnic that had been interrupted by a thunder storm--in that same drawer. Suddenly, I realized that those tiny black rice "things" were mouse droppings.
My buddy the handy guy, set traps and sealed up all the openings in the kitchen and voila, the problem was solved. I cleaned all the drawers and cabinets and threw out the old utensil containers and replaced them. Then about a week and a half ago, I was dashing around to get ready for a date and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. There in the bathtub was a frantically scared mouse scrabbling to get up the sides of the tub and escape. I turned the water on, figuring I'd drown it. It squeaked frantically and I suddenly remembered the old Ralph the Mouse series from Beverly Cleary. First I called my handy pal and got hysterical for a minute. This always makes me feel better. It's ridiculous and while I am going on about the terrible mouse I realize that I'm going to have to buck up and deal with the situation. Screeching and carrying on does help though.
I went downstairs and got one of those sour cream tubs that seem to magically accumulate without their matching lids, I figured I'd trap it and then just wait for my date to show up. And then the date could..fortunately I came to my senses--imagining the following. "Hi, you look great. Come on in, I just have to do one thing. Here, could you just dispose of this live rodent somewhere outside in the yard?"
I went upstairs with the plastic container and slipped it under the mouse and jammed the top on. Unfortunately, I caught the poor thing's tail between the plastic lid and the container--which must be the rodent equivalent of water-boarding. (Isn't it strange how "water-boarding" has become the catchall phrase for any vaguely socially acceptable form of heinous torture?) The mouse's squeaking intensified. I rushed downstairs and tossed the container into the front garden. Sometimes I think about the normal neighbors across the street and their view of all of our shenanigans. They're lovely, normal people with happy, conventional lives. We've become the crazy people who throw bags of recyclables from the back deck into the garbage bin across the driveway, and who sometimes have "guests" wearing "dad's old robe" taking out the trash
I hurled the container into the garden and noticed that the mouse had not managed to escape his tiny plastic holding cell because I'd jammed the top on too tightly--on top of his tail, which I now saw had sort of come off. Gack. I dashed back upstairs, bleached the tub and hopped into the shower and tried to scrub all rodent images from my brain.
Fast forward a week and I notice that the work bench in the basement is a mess. I look more closely and I am instantly sorry. It is covered with mouse droppings and Halloween candy wrappers. One of the kids has hidden away a bag of "treats" and the mice have decided to help me save on dental costs for the coming year. I am completely grossed out. So grossed out that I can't even face the situation for two more days. Then I make an expedition to Home Depot to stock the armory and make a serious incursion in the rodent population "down under". I bought several of those pricey traps that electrocute the mouse. You put a little peanut butter on the door to the "Room of Doom" and zapppp, the mouse is fried. Once more, I cleaned, bleached and set my traps. (I'm starting to feel a bit like Davy Crockett...except that I'm trapping something useless and disgusting. Why can't I be fighting a mink invasion? Some sort of creature that you can make coats or hats out of.....) Then I waited and waited.
The truth is I wait until somebody handy comes along to check the traps, because that part really, really, really disgusts me. Bad enough to have tiny, filthy rodents in the house but dead, rotting, tiny filthy rodents is worse. Finally, a handy pal happened along and he got the honor of dumping the body and resetting the trap. Silly me, I figured that because the candy was gone "down under", the mice were also gone. Once more I breathed a premature sigh of relief.
Then this evening I was sitting at my desk, just as I am now, and I heard a strange rustling in the trash can. I ignored it, thinking it was probably one of our two useless cats. I made the mistake of looking up and saw a rather fat, healthy looking mouse scurrying for the attic storage space. He had darted out of the trash can and scurried under the door. Once more I went down to the basement and found yet another electrocuted mouse in the Zap-o-matic trap. Once more I screamed and placed a somewhat frantic long-distance phone call simply to release tension. Maybe the time I spend shrieking into the phone frees up some other part of my brain to pull itself together and start calculating the number of plastic bags needed to take out the dead. Then again, it could just be procrastination.
This time I threw the mouse body in the bag--not tied, because tying a plastic bag with a dead rodent inside leads to huge odor issues--and hurled it into the back yard. The Zap-o-matic trap is now sitting next to the attic door, freshly baited with peanut butter. The sleeping cat across the room has managed to stay asleep throughout the whole drama. Kid 1 tells me that our hunting cat will only go after fresh prey outside, not inside the house. Outside he kills birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice, moles, grackles, sparrows. Each day I'd rush around and try to hide all the fresh bodies before the kids came home from school. Because if they saw the bodies, they immediately demanded that we name the deceased and bury it. The backyard was starting to look like a tiny, creepy cemetery. He killed so many things that we "belled" him. Now he is only able to kill big fat bugs and sometimes really dumb chipmunks in the fall. For some reason, chipmunks appear to get really dumb when the leaves turn.
I wish we had dumb mice or smarter cats. If we had Ralph Mouse, I could just bribe him with the promise of a Ducati and send him over to the neighbor's house to live. And he could live happily ever after with his whole extended family....until then I suspect the cycle of shrieking, dialing while screeching and rodent body disposal will continue. At least until the peanut butter holds out.
My buddy the handy guy, set traps and sealed up all the openings in the kitchen and voila, the problem was solved. I cleaned all the drawers and cabinets and threw out the old utensil containers and replaced them. Then about a week and a half ago, I was dashing around to get ready for a date and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. There in the bathtub was a frantically scared mouse scrabbling to get up the sides of the tub and escape. I turned the water on, figuring I'd drown it. It squeaked frantically and I suddenly remembered the old Ralph the Mouse series from Beverly Cleary. First I called my handy pal and got hysterical for a minute. This always makes me feel better. It's ridiculous and while I am going on about the terrible mouse I realize that I'm going to have to buck up and deal with the situation. Screeching and carrying on does help though.
I went downstairs and got one of those sour cream tubs that seem to magically accumulate without their matching lids, I figured I'd trap it and then just wait for my date to show up. And then the date could..fortunately I came to my senses--imagining the following. "Hi, you look great. Come on in, I just have to do one thing. Here, could you just dispose of this live rodent somewhere outside in the yard?"
I went upstairs with the plastic container and slipped it under the mouse and jammed the top on. Unfortunately, I caught the poor thing's tail between the plastic lid and the container--which must be the rodent equivalent of water-boarding. (Isn't it strange how "water-boarding" has become the catchall phrase for any vaguely socially acceptable form of heinous torture?) The mouse's squeaking intensified. I rushed downstairs and tossed the container into the front garden. Sometimes I think about the normal neighbors across the street and their view of all of our shenanigans. They're lovely, normal people with happy, conventional lives. We've become the crazy people who throw bags of recyclables from the back deck into the garbage bin across the driveway, and who sometimes have "guests" wearing "dad's old robe" taking out the trash
I hurled the container into the garden and noticed that the mouse had not managed to escape his tiny plastic holding cell because I'd jammed the top on too tightly--on top of his tail, which I now saw had sort of come off. Gack. I dashed back upstairs, bleached the tub and hopped into the shower and tried to scrub all rodent images from my brain.
Fast forward a week and I notice that the work bench in the basement is a mess. I look more closely and I am instantly sorry. It is covered with mouse droppings and Halloween candy wrappers. One of the kids has hidden away a bag of "treats" and the mice have decided to help me save on dental costs for the coming year. I am completely grossed out. So grossed out that I can't even face the situation for two more days. Then I make an expedition to Home Depot to stock the armory and make a serious incursion in the rodent population "down under". I bought several of those pricey traps that electrocute the mouse. You put a little peanut butter on the door to the "Room of Doom" and zapppp, the mouse is fried. Once more, I cleaned, bleached and set my traps. (I'm starting to feel a bit like Davy Crockett...except that I'm trapping something useless and disgusting. Why can't I be fighting a mink invasion? Some sort of creature that you can make coats or hats out of.....) Then I waited and waited.
The truth is I wait until somebody handy comes along to check the traps, because that part really, really, really disgusts me. Bad enough to have tiny, filthy rodents in the house but dead, rotting, tiny filthy rodents is worse. Finally, a handy pal happened along and he got the honor of dumping the body and resetting the trap. Silly me, I figured that because the candy was gone "down under", the mice were also gone. Once more I breathed a premature sigh of relief.
Then this evening I was sitting at my desk, just as I am now, and I heard a strange rustling in the trash can. I ignored it, thinking it was probably one of our two useless cats. I made the mistake of looking up and saw a rather fat, healthy looking mouse scurrying for the attic storage space. He had darted out of the trash can and scurried under the door. Once more I went down to the basement and found yet another electrocuted mouse in the Zap-o-matic trap. Once more I screamed and placed a somewhat frantic long-distance phone call simply to release tension. Maybe the time I spend shrieking into the phone frees up some other part of my brain to pull itself together and start calculating the number of plastic bags needed to take out the dead. Then again, it could just be procrastination.
This time I threw the mouse body in the bag--not tied, because tying a plastic bag with a dead rodent inside leads to huge odor issues--and hurled it into the back yard. The Zap-o-matic trap is now sitting next to the attic door, freshly baited with peanut butter. The sleeping cat across the room has managed to stay asleep throughout the whole drama. Kid 1 tells me that our hunting cat will only go after fresh prey outside, not inside the house. Outside he kills birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice, moles, grackles, sparrows. Each day I'd rush around and try to hide all the fresh bodies before the kids came home from school. Because if they saw the bodies, they immediately demanded that we name the deceased and bury it. The backyard was starting to look like a tiny, creepy cemetery. He killed so many things that we "belled" him. Now he is only able to kill big fat bugs and sometimes really dumb chipmunks in the fall. For some reason, chipmunks appear to get really dumb when the leaves turn.
I wish we had dumb mice or smarter cats. If we had Ralph Mouse, I could just bribe him with the promise of a Ducati and send him over to the neighbor's house to live. And he could live happily ever after with his whole extended family....until then I suspect the cycle of shrieking, dialing while screeching and rodent body disposal will continue. At least until the peanut butter holds out.
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