Ode on a mouse
I am not a screamer. When I see a mouse, I do not scream. I burn with fury. How DARE that thing invade my space? What the hell are YOU doing here?
I have pretty much lived in older homes for my whole life. Older homes have mice. We also live in a woody area now and this adds to the problem.
When I was a kid, we'd all be sitting in the living room and we'd hear the telltale snap of the mouse trap and my mother would sigh and get up to deal with it. Always thrifty, she would either kill the trapped mouse with a hammer or, more ideally, if it was already dead, would hold the wire up and take the mouse out to the outside trashcan, casually holding it by the tail. Then, adding more peanut butter to the trap, she'd reset it and....get this....put it back....IN OUR SILVERWARE DRAWER. Yes, that is where we caught most of the mice. If I ponder this too much, I feel sick.
Now, we catch most mice in our garage, a few in the kitchen. Once, memorably, we caught one in our dining room. We had set out both snap traps and sticky traps in the kitchen and garage and after coming home from a movie one Sunday, we saw a mouse frantically running around our dining room, its front legs attached to a sticky trap while its back legs propelled it around, careening into chair legs and walls like a crazy drunk mouse.
But, the rest of them have been caught mostly in our garage. T is the one who deals with them because she says she finds it disturbing that I insist on screaming at them in their last moments.
"They're just animals that are in the wrong place," she insists. "They are little and scared and you are this giant screaming at them and calling them names right before they die. It is a very ugly part of you that I didn't know about until it was too late and I was in love with you. So, there you have it. I fell in love with a mouse abuser."
I am not repentant in the least. I DETEST those rodents. They are VERMIN, I tell you. VERMIN. They are cheeky and smart assed and dirty.
So, she deals with, what she refers to as....the little critters. UGH!
We have a series of steps in our garage that go up to our kitchen door. They are moveable but they are heavy. It is not fun to move them. T set a few traps under them, and for some reason, we catch more mice in these traps than in all the other ones put together.
T is a mouse trap connoisseur. She uses a combination of sticky and snap traps, all laid out, usually in rows along the sides of our garage. To me, it looks like a ninja warrior mouse game. I picture them all in my mind, that smelly Meese family. They are plotting a way into our kitchen pantry, to the wastebasket where they can smell that leftover spaghetti sauce from the TV dinner I had for lunch yesterday. Where the crust from that hardened leftover cinnamon roll lays on top of the crumpled pretzel bag.
Meese Dad: Okay, kids. It looks like T has set up a snap, snap, sticky, snap trap maze. So, Junior, you must nimbly leap over the first one and hit the second one square in the middle and then veer to the left to avoid the sticky trap and then hey, let's see if you can pry that piece of cheese out of the last one before you get to the knobby hole under the steps and then up the pipes to the motherlode.
Junior Meese: But, Daaaaddd!?? Why don't I just run across the middle of the garage and escape this nonsense altogether?
Mother Meese: Don't talk back to your father, junior. You know what we are: MICE! We are predestined to snake along the walls like the common vermin we proudly are.
We catch about one mouse a week. It is usually in the snap trap and usually dead, but T tells me that mice are very smart. That they often will PLAY dead until she snaps the trap only to spring out and run for their lives. If this ever happened to me, I SWEAR that the little bitch would die slow and cruel...if I could catch it. I would take it over to our neighbor's evil eyed cat and let her have it. T also says that even on the sticky trap, the mouse will lay limp and dead looking sometimes only to suddenly come to vibrant life when she tries to pull it off with a gloved hand.
This information simply adds to my hatred of them. Not only are they dirty and gross, but, in my eyes, they are now common redneck criminals who deserve whatever they get.
But, as I said, most of our mice are caught under our back steps. We will know that a mouse is caught because, frankly, it will start to stink. Nothing smells as gross as a dead mouse. Well, I am not an expert on dead things, I suppose. I have never smelled a dead PERSON, which I will bet smells worse. But, anyway....one of us will catch a whiff and look at the other and both of us will nod. Then, later, T will move the cars out of the garage and pull back the steps and there it will be: a dead mouse.
I sometimes think what their death throes must be like. They are usually on the sticky traps. So, basically, they are trapped on a sticky trap and can't move. Occasionally, they will hear one or both of us coming or going during the day or night. I picture their little heads looking fearfully upwards....
And I could not care less.
They are VERMIN.
I have pretty much lived in older homes for my whole life. Older homes have mice. We also live in a woody area now and this adds to the problem.
When I was a kid, we'd all be sitting in the living room and we'd hear the telltale snap of the mouse trap and my mother would sigh and get up to deal with it. Always thrifty, she would either kill the trapped mouse with a hammer or, more ideally, if it was already dead, would hold the wire up and take the mouse out to the outside trashcan, casually holding it by the tail. Then, adding more peanut butter to the trap, she'd reset it and....get this....put it back....IN OUR SILVERWARE DRAWER. Yes, that is where we caught most of the mice. If I ponder this too much, I feel sick.
Now, we catch most mice in our garage, a few in the kitchen. Once, memorably, we caught one in our dining room. We had set out both snap traps and sticky traps in the kitchen and garage and after coming home from a movie one Sunday, we saw a mouse frantically running around our dining room, its front legs attached to a sticky trap while its back legs propelled it around, careening into chair legs and walls like a crazy drunk mouse.
But, the rest of them have been caught mostly in our garage. T is the one who deals with them because she says she finds it disturbing that I insist on screaming at them in their last moments.
"They're just animals that are in the wrong place," she insists. "They are little and scared and you are this giant screaming at them and calling them names right before they die. It is a very ugly part of you that I didn't know about until it was too late and I was in love with you. So, there you have it. I fell in love with a mouse abuser."
I am not repentant in the least. I DETEST those rodents. They are VERMIN, I tell you. VERMIN. They are cheeky and smart assed and dirty.
So, she deals with, what she refers to as....the little critters. UGH!
We have a series of steps in our garage that go up to our kitchen door. They are moveable but they are heavy. It is not fun to move them. T set a few traps under them, and for some reason, we catch more mice in these traps than in all the other ones put together.
T is a mouse trap connoisseur. She uses a combination of sticky and snap traps, all laid out, usually in rows along the sides of our garage. To me, it looks like a ninja warrior mouse game. I picture them all in my mind, that smelly Meese family. They are plotting a way into our kitchen pantry, to the wastebasket where they can smell that leftover spaghetti sauce from the TV dinner I had for lunch yesterday. Where the crust from that hardened leftover cinnamon roll lays on top of the crumpled pretzel bag.
Meese Dad: Okay, kids. It looks like T has set up a snap, snap, sticky, snap trap maze. So, Junior, you must nimbly leap over the first one and hit the second one square in the middle and then veer to the left to avoid the sticky trap and then hey, let's see if you can pry that piece of cheese out of the last one before you get to the knobby hole under the steps and then up the pipes to the motherlode.
Junior Meese: But, Daaaaddd!?? Why don't I just run across the middle of the garage and escape this nonsense altogether?
Mother Meese: Don't talk back to your father, junior. You know what we are: MICE! We are predestined to snake along the walls like the common vermin we proudly are.
We catch about one mouse a week. It is usually in the snap trap and usually dead, but T tells me that mice are very smart. That they often will PLAY dead until she snaps the trap only to spring out and run for their lives. If this ever happened to me, I SWEAR that the little bitch would die slow and cruel...if I could catch it. I would take it over to our neighbor's evil eyed cat and let her have it. T also says that even on the sticky trap, the mouse will lay limp and dead looking sometimes only to suddenly come to vibrant life when she tries to pull it off with a gloved hand.
This information simply adds to my hatred of them. Not only are they dirty and gross, but, in my eyes, they are now common redneck criminals who deserve whatever they get.
But, as I said, most of our mice are caught under our back steps. We will know that a mouse is caught because, frankly, it will start to stink. Nothing smells as gross as a dead mouse. Well, I am not an expert on dead things, I suppose. I have never smelled a dead PERSON, which I will bet smells worse. But, anyway....one of us will catch a whiff and look at the other and both of us will nod. Then, later, T will move the cars out of the garage and pull back the steps and there it will be: a dead mouse.
I sometimes think what their death throes must be like. They are usually on the sticky traps. So, basically, they are trapped on a sticky trap and can't move. Occasionally, they will hear one or both of us coming or going during the day or night. I picture their little heads looking fearfully upwards....
And I could not care less.
They are VERMIN.
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