Monday, December 12, 2005

Mouse in the House

We have a mouse in our house. For now we naïvely believe that it’s a bachelor mouse with no wife or scores of mouse children. We believe that he hasn’t found that special someone and decided to make our home into his home. That’s a pipe dream, we know, but we also believe that I’ll be done with our remodel Real Soon Now™ as well.

Carrie first discovered him when he ran across her foot after she lifted up the mound of dirty clothes on her floor. To her credit, she would like me to point out that she DID NOT scream like a girl when she saw the little fuzzball. She said, “Dad! There’s a mouse in my room. Now it’s in the hall. Now I can’t see it.”

I ran into the hall to see what the clatter was (along with all eighteen of my children who just HAD TO SEE the mouse).

“What did he look like, Carrie?” which was kind of a stupid question now that I write it out. What did it matter what the thing looked like? If it was furry, had a tail, and possessed beedy little eyes and scampered across the hall, I’m pretty sure I’d have been able to ID it. I’m not a genius, but I know that anything fitting the description of a rodent will be out of place in our hallway.

“It’s brown and furry and sooooooo cute!”

“Carrie, if we find it, we aren’t keeping it.”

“There it is!!!!” shrieked Lucas (or possibly Jonah). I didn’t see it, but my mighty hunters assured me that it ran under Ellis’ toy car. It wasn’t there. We hunted for a while all over the house, but our prey was far too clever for us.

When Reha got home, every single child, all nineteen of them, jumped up, ran to her at the door and shouted in unison, “Mom!! We have a mouse! It’s sooooooo cute!! Dad wants to kill it.”

Editor’s note: I hadn’t actually said anything yet about setting traps, poison or staking out the kitchen with a flashlight and a shotgun. The kids were projecting, I assure you, Intarweb. I’m all for animal rights and don’t believe in being cruel to animals, but I do tend to draw the line at “wild” animals in my house, who indiscriminately poop wherever they feel like it. Only I am allowed to do that. All things being equal, I’d rather not share my personal space with rodents. We already have kids, you know? Isn’t that enough?

That was last week. We have been on the lookout for our furry friend ever since. On Saturday I heard a bit of scratching coming from underneath the ‘fridge. Reha then began negotiations with it, “Look, Little Mouse, we can get you a real home.”

She looked over at me and said, “I’m calling it Little Mouse because we don’t know if it’s a boy mouse or a girl mouse and I don’t want to offend it.”

“ Sure, babe, that makes totally sense, talking to the mouse in gender neutral terms.”

She continued, speaking in the direction of behind the ‘fridge and in the cabinets, “Yes, it’s true the house we would provide would be a cage, but we’ll feed you much better than what you’ll find under the refrigerator, I assure you. And though you’ll have to adopt a life of celibacy, you’ll be warm and well loved. That’s not so bad, is it?” She investigated the cabinet and of course, she found a package of corn meal with chew marks in it. The mouse never answered her, but Reha thinks that if we get a bullhorn like a real negotiator, she’d be able to be more successful. “If I can just get through to him!!”

And when you come right down to it, I can think of lots of situations where a bullhorn would come in handy. Getting kids to bed. Rounding them up in the grocery store. Telling them to do their homework. Save us from going horse. We are totally getting one.

I’m mostly just kind of curious why we had corn meal in the first place. What on earth do we make or have made that requires corn meal?

So we’ve thrown out all the food that looks like it was sampled by our little friend and vacuumed out his poop and nest from the back of the cabinet. And as soon as I have some time, I’ll be looking into some kind of humane trap. Do they make “catch and release” mouse traps? And I’ll be getting Reha a bullhorn.

Jon scribbled this mess on 12/12/05 at 06:33 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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