For my Wife's Peace of Mind

Lisa is slightly disturbed by the personal nature of the two posts on mice.

Let me set the record straight: if we had a problem with rodents or pests, I would have gone insane years ago.

In nearly ten years of living together this is only the second mouse I've seen in our home (the first was one my cat killed and brought home as a 'trophy'), and we've never had a problem with other pests. The mice mentioned in the rest of the piece were at work or at other locales.

Also, I feel it neccessary to point out that while rodents are my achille's heel, it does not in any way reduce the fact that I am, to be fair, the studliest man in America.

 

Dan

The Post about my Mouse Feb 5th

For those of you paying attention, yes, the chronology in this post and the one before it seems a little out of whack.

 In truth the previous post was written in November, but not posted becasue I feared it would jinx me. When it didn't matter anymore (see this post) I decided  to give it a whirl.

 

Curse the fates.

A mouse made the migration.

About a week ago I was helping the wife make dinner when I saw what, to my eyes, looked like chocolate sprinkles in the cupboard.

You will note that chocolate sprinkles, while never advertised as such by the manufacturer, bear a striking resemblance to mouse droppings.

My wife put me at ease, pointing out we did have sundae toppings on that very shelf and the kids probably spilled some.

Fine.

Now explain why a few days later a box of crackers was chewed to bits.

Here's where my wife lost me. Normally, to salvage my fragile sanity I can deny reality at will. Not so my wife, who is overly realistic to a fault.

So forgive me for doing a cartoon double-take at her response:

"Maybe the kids did it," she said.

Hey, my kids are beasts when it comes to snack food, and the youngest does have quite a set of choppers, but I doubt they would choose to chew through a box instead of just . . . opening it.

And how did she explain the equally violated box behind it?

"I think I remember yelling at Olivia for doing that," she said.

Yeah, uh-huh. Hey, who knows? If she believed that, maybe she does mean it when she tells me size doesn't matter.

Within a few minutes, the frightening truth came to light: by way of a crack between the cupboard and the wall, a mouse had been feasting on our rations.

[as this isn't Fear Factor I'll leave out what we found in the box of rice; nor will I mention that we'd made chinese food the night before]

I've already explained my fear of mice, so we'll gloss over the aftermath: the panic attack, the persistent and morbid belief that every gust of wind was a mouse crawling on my skin, and the fact that my wife had to all but slap me and tell me to be a man before I'd handle a bag of garbage that included the cracker boxes.

My only hope was that we'd catch the bugger soon. After my wife set the traps (what, you expected me to do it?) I spent an uneasy night tossing and turning.

Overnight the traps had been licked clean without catching a thing.

To say this heightened my anxiety is an understatement. That evening, I came up with a new plan - newly baited traps, each surrounded by a wall of glue traps.

If he figured a way around that, forgetaboutit - no way I was staying in the same house as something that'd escaped from Nimh. .

We got him.

He died heroically, as mice go - he'd gotten tangled in the glue traps, each paw stuck to a different trap, but pushed onward towards his destiny (in this case, the spring trap)

He stayed where he was for a few hours after I found him, until my wife woke up and arranged his funeral.

As for me, I am still recovering.

Despite the fact that I have cleaned the house top to bottom and found no trace of another beast, and that the traps we set out as a precaution remain untouched, I'm leery. Even with fresh groceries I still won't eat anything from the cupboard, and the kitchen gives me the creeps.

The upside to this? Our family has enjoyed more dinners out in the last week than in the whole of 2004.

Of course, by doing this we can no longer afford a mousetrap if we do get another visitor . . .

The Post about my Neighbors' Mice Feb 3rd

My next door neighbors have mice.

This wouldn't be a problem if we lived in a nice new sub-division with half an acre of land between their house and ours. But this is the south side of Milwaukee. Our house isn't just a stone's throw away, it's a stones throw for a one armed child with tennis elbow.

It may also pose a slight problem because of my deep and unyielding fear of any rodent that doesn't have a theme park named after him.

For those of you who know me, this is old news. You may skip down the page without fear of retaliation. For those of you new to my world:

I am a 6'3", 300-pound man.

I have been charged by pit bulls while working for a land surveyor.

I have escaped harm at the hands of a group of drunk thugs by pure bravado.

I have, as a hotel manager, kicked out many people with bad mojo in their heart and good firearms at their side.

I have also pushed my wife off a chair and jumped atop it at the sight of a mouse.

I once, at the age of twenty-nine, considered calling my Dad to pick up a dead mouse I found on my property.

I had an on-duty police officer intervene the sole time I tried to kill a mouse, and had him reprimand me for asking him - seriously - to shoot it.

In short, I have a slight fear of mice.

So you can imagine my distress when my neighbor casually dropped her news in my lap. It's just one or two, she said. One or two? That, to me, is the difference between a panic attack and hospitalization.

I thought back to when I moved in. I asked the departing resident - smoothly, I thought - if there had ever been any, you know, mice or anything?

"Oh, we had a mousy here or there, but nothing for years now, "she said. A 'mousy'.

It took my wife a week to get me to stop sleeping in the car.

Logically, I know there is no guarantee that these monsters will visit my home. I can rationalize that my neighbor is a filthy, uncombed woman (which sadly, is untrue). I can conclude that my foundation is miraculously more secure than that of her house. I can hope that she terminates these creatures quickly and completely.

Yet these are just convenient lies. I have no doubt that my neighbor is a clean, meticulous housekeeper. I am sure her basement foundation is as tightly sealed as Don Corleone’s alibi. I know she will fail to punish these rodents as they deserve. Already I can see, in my mind's eye, the mice marching calmly from her house to mine.

So my mind fills with battle plans. Do I purchase traps now, with the idea of ending the threat before I even see it? Do I explore the idea of an exterminator? Or do I do what, frankly, seems like the only intelligent thing to do:

Pull up stakes and move immediately.

Yes, there's the possibility that some minor harm would result. Certainly the kids would miss their friends, our modest investment would be for naught, my wife would be incensed; insignificant riff raff, all. For me, it's worth it.

Or, I could bite the bullet and act like a man. I could put the worries out of mind, and when and if they materialize I could face my phobia and overcome it once and for all.

Uh, yeah.

See you in Toledo.