Hearing
about his mouse problem made me think back to when we had one, at our old
place. It was about this time of year when I spotted the first sign of them,
probably because they were looking for a nice warm place to spend the winter –
kind of like people who head to Florida.
There
were subtle signs at first. A few mouse droppings here and there – followed by
more obvious signs, like piles of dog-biscuit crumbs lying next to piles of
shredded paper and cloth. The final straw came when I pulled my velvet bathrobe
out of the spare-room closet and noticed that the hem had been chewed off.
That’s when I officially declared war.
The
guy at the local hardware store showed me a variety of mouse-killing devices,
all obviously invented by the Marquis de Sade.
They maimed, flattened, decapitated and crushed. I was surprised the
clerk didn’t drag out a hungry cat in a cage and offer that to me, too.
In
my opinion, the worst trap of all was the one that stuck the mice to a glue
board.
“What
do you do with the mouse once it’s stuck to the board?” I asked the clerk.
“Just
toss it in the trash,” he said.
“But
isn’t the mouse still alive?”
He
shrugged. “Yeah, so what? He’ll die eventually.”
I’m
no big fan of mice, but the thought some poor little mouse slowly dying while
stuck to a board sounded downright barbaric. So I bought some traps that
consisted of clear plastic tubes with a little trap door on one end. Put some
bait into the trap, the clerk told me, and then the mice will go in and can’t
get back out. And best of all, they remain unharmed.
“But
there isn’t any air in these traps once they’re inside,” the clerk said, “so
you have to let them loose within a couple hours.”
I
brought the traps home, shoved a clump of peanut butter into each one and set
them under the kitchen sink and in the spare-bedroom closet, where my chewed-up
robe had been.
Within
two hours, I caught five mice.
“Look
how cute they are!” I said, showing one of the tubes to my husband. The mouse
inside had huge black eyes and was still nibbling on the peanut butter,
oblivious to the fact he was trapped and facing impending doom.
“Yeah,
he’s just adorable,” my husband said, rolling his eyes. “Where are you going to
let him loose?”
“I’ll
drive a few miles from here and let him go in the woods.”
He
looked relieved. “I would have bet you were going to let him loose right out
back in the yard…or keep him as a pet.”
I
must have driven 20 miles that day on the same back road through the woods, to
let the mice loose. I even caught a
couple late at night, and because the clerk had said to set them free within
two hours, I, in my pajamas, dutifully drove the rodents out to the woods. I could
only imagine what a police officer would have thought if he’d have driven by
and seen a woman in her pajamas bending over in the bushes in the middle of the
night.
One
mouse, a really teeny, young-looking one, didn’t want to leave the tube. When I
finally managed to get him out, he sat on my foot and refused to budge. I came
very close to bringing him back home with me…and naming him Mickey.
The
only thing that prevented me from doing so was I figured Mickey probably would
end up being Exhibit-A at my divorce trial.
When
the traps finally remained empty for few days and no new evidence of mice
showed up anywhere, I declared victory.
But
a week later, we had a new problem…big black ants. They suddenly were
everywhere, crawling all over the house, as if they’d arrived by the busload
for a vacation. When an ant fell off
the ceiling one night and landed in my husband’s mashed potatoes while we were
eating dinner, I once again declared war.
But
this time, I wasn’t about to be Mrs. Nice Guy (not that I’d drive a bunch of
ants out to the woods anyway). No, I went back to the hardware store and bought
the aforementioned torturous glue boards.
Just
call me Sally de Sade.
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