One Is More Than Enough

 

Before I start today's actual story, I have two prefaces. 

The first is this: I am incurably squeamish about small critters. Even though I am the mother of four sons, I do not enjoy bugs, or snakes, or things that skitter.  I did my best to cover this personality failing when the Boys were little. 

"Oh, look! It's a cute little frog!" I would exclaim in a voice that was too high and a tone that was too quavery. Then I would grit my teeth and accept the frog onto my own palm for what I considered a reasonable amount of time before returning it to nature and fleeing inside to soak my hands in boiling water. 

I am also physically incapable of killing anything that might contain instestinal goo. Just the thought of that ooziness triggers my gag reflex. Step on a cricket? Nope, not happening. Clap a fly to death between my bare hands? I have tried, honestly tried, but without fail the clap veers off to miss the fly by a measurable distance. 

So that is the first preface to this story, and here is the second: Even though the House on the Corner is nearly a century old, in the 34 years we have sheltered within its walls I have never seen a mouse sheltering inside with us. Oh, I thought I did once, and even blogged it with what turned out to be the exact same clipart I am using today, but the "mouse" turned out to be rampant dust bunnies. 

That's why I was more than a little shocked last week when, as I sat in the recliner working on my latest knitting project and streaming an old "Columbo" episode, an honest-to-gosh mouse sauntered into the television room between me and Peter Falk. Believe me, the murder victim was much less surprised than I was. My room exit rate was in hyperspeed gear.

I texted Husband.

It's like he's never met me before. But God bless him, I married a good man. Within minutes, even in the full throes of tax season, he had locked the office door and was on his way home. Meanwhile, figuring the mouse would be occupied for at least half an hour before Columbo figured out that the baseball manager had clocked the star pitcher with a big chunk of ice and shoved him in the swimming pool (sorry, spoiler alert), I had moved to the kitchen.

And it was there, five minutes later, that I glanced down and strolling through the kitchen door was THE MOUSE! It stopped in the middle of the floor, not three feet away, and took a break.

I know! It's like it knew I am incapable of killing small critters and was taunting me. It's a classic mouse move. 

Sadly, even though I was literally surrounded by sharp weapons, there was no way I was going to impale it with one of my good kitchen knives (see also: intestinal goo) so my mind raced to a more humane method of disposal. 

Moving slowly, one inch at a time, I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a large plastic cup, the kind that holds overpriced Diet Pepsi at football games. The mouse was still sitting there.

I inched toward it, moving at the speed of a sundial. No rodent movement. 

Finally, fully expecting the mouse to dash off at the final moment, I slammed the cup over it. 

It did not dash off. 

Instead, my critter-avoidance instinct kicked in and instead of slamming the cup over the mouse I managed to slam the cup onto the mouse. If you drew a dotted line from its twitchy little nose to the base of its repulsive tail, that's where the edge of the cup smacked down.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!

There I was, bent double and as trapped by the mouse as it was by that heroic plastic cup. I couldn't pick up the cup, because I wasn't absolutely sure the mouse was dead and I saw that episode of The Crown where the injured elk just wandered around in the queen's forest for days and days. No way was I letting an injured mouse loose. But I also could not bring myself to exert more pressure on the cup for a definite demise. Nope, nope, nope. Not in a million years. 

And at that moment, I heard a key in the back door. Friends, Sleeping Beauty was not nearly as happy to see her Prince pucker up as I was to hear that door open. 

"A little help here?" I croaked from from my bent-double position behind the island. 

Husband, who actually does know me very well, took charge at that point and held on to the cup while I fetched a pair of pliers so that he could grip that disgusting tail, remove the cup, and discover that Mickey was indeed dead as a doornail. 

Later, after he had gleefully sent pictures of the (completely flattened) rodent to the Boys and crowed about what a mighty hunter their mother was, he went back out to the hardware store and came home with six each of three different kinds of traps. Then he Googled the best place to set them (everywhere) and so thoroughly carpeted the ground floor with anti-mouse protection that we may never find every trap.

In the three days since, the traps have seen no activity. I'm hoping this means we're started on the next 34-year mouse-free streak. 

But if we do find anything in the traps, be watching the real estate ads. One episode of intestinal goo is more than enough.