I have some very disturbing news to share:
There are mice in our house.
Ok, I know that you’re looking at me like ‘Well, duh!’ because of the first mouse and the second mouse incident. But you see, I had rationalized them. With the First Mouse (well, technically, half a mouse), I figured he was sort of an Indiana Jones kind of mouse. Bravely investigating the whereabouts of some mythical lost mouse arc or something, only to get beheaded (and betorsoed) by the Nazi Feline Deathtrap. I figured, huh, fluke. And then, with the Second Mouse, it must have been little Indiana Jones’s friend. I figured that he must have been sitting around with the other mice in wherever it is the mice live (someplace that is not Inside My House) and suddenly he looked up and said ‘Hey, have you guys seen Ralph recently? I better go look for him. And then let’s go and get some nachos. I’ll be right back.’ You know’ famous last words, right? So, Mouse The Second went looking for little dead halfling mouse and found a Lugubrious Cat instead.
That was my thought process, you see. Because sometimes it’s not beneficial one’s sanity to be creative. And because you’ve just got to know that mice jones on nachos.
Tonight, after I watched as much TiVo’d Manor House as I could stand, I turned off the lights. Then heard the sound of Tilly rambling around on the floor.
muffle bumple badump bump
Then a different sound. I do not know how to type the phonetics it but I swear it was the sound that the evil Gremlins made in the Phoebe Cates movie. Or like those psychotic little troll things in a 70’s movie staring Karen Valentine, I believe, where these little evil things live in the walls of the house and come out through the fireplace when it got dark.
WAY SCARY!
I sighed. It had to be another mouse. Because she wanted to show me, you see, so she was going to bring it to me. IN FUCKING BED. This is my worst fear, right there. That I will be sleeping and suddenly Tilly will jump up onto the bed and drop some cold dead little lump or worse, some wriggling squeaking live little scurrymonster onto my pristine white sheets where it will then TOUCH ME or otherwise destroy any future ability to ever sleep soundly again. Esteban has given me strict orders that if such a thing should ever happen that I am not to kill him in the attempt to flee from the vermin, but I have assured him that I doubt that I would do anything but shoot straight up into the air and all he would see were legs and ass running out of the room, the way Scooby and Shaggy did when they were really scared, only I wouldn’t do that stupid run in place thing first that they always did, just Zoombyebye.
I didn’t have a light by my bed, so I turned on the television and watched as Tilly chased a little black mercury torpedo around my side of the bed and into my jeans on the floor. (insert joke about getting into my pants here) I undoubtedly decreased Tilly’s ability to see the little ball of pestilence. The mouse ran between two hampers toward the loveseat. I jumped up and flicked on the overhead light. Tilly began to sniff around the area that was easily 12 feet away from where the mouse went. I started moving things to see if I could see it.
Suddenly it ran out and froze next to a balled up sock!
‘TILLY!’ I whispered, trying not to scare it. I grabbed her and threw her at it. She ran away. The mouse didn’t move. I grabbed her again, by the tail, and tried to point to the thing, but she could only sniff at my finger.
God, I wish someone would breed the concept of POINTING into animals. There is nothing as infuriating as when you point at something and they think you are presenting them with a delectable bit of tuna finger.
The cat meowed and then ran out of the room. The mouse did nothing but look at me. With its cute adorable little eyes and big perfectly round Mickey Mouse ears. Even terrified out of my wits, I was struck by how completely adorable it was. Why did it have to be a Haley Joel Osment mouse, hmmm? Why couldn’t it have been a Danny DeVito mouse or a Jason Alexander mouse?
Oh, did I mentioned that I was barefoot and wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of rather voluminous granny That Time Of The Month panties? By rights, that mouse should have died of fright right there. I grabbed a Lane Bryant bag, hoping to scoop it up, but by then, the mouse had scurried off under the loveseat.
Why do we have a loveseat in the damn bedroom? Why? It’s just a place for the cat to sleep. The cat who brings mice into the bedroom and then LOSES THEM.
I walked out into the garage, flipped on the light (in aforementioned tshirt and granny panties, not caring if the neighbors saw me), grabbed the live trap, put it on the floor in front of the love seat, grabbed a flashlight off Esteban’s dresser, then crawled back into bed, cursing the tailored bedskirt that would be the perfect little device for some vengeance-ridden rodent to scale and then tap dance across my face with impunity.
I crawled back into bed with a flashlight. Tilly was prowling around the loveseat and the baskets of clothing, as though she remembered that she came in there for something but she couldn’t quite remember what. Finally, she gave up, hopped onto the bed and proceeded to clean herself while making noises that sounded suspiciously as though she were eviscerating a mouse on the bed. She wasn’t. I kept beaming my little flashlight on her, only to find her contentedly licking her butt.
Note the lesson here from the animal kingdom. The only thing more important than protecting her owners from the threat of home invaders is proper butt hygiene.
I then couldn’t sleep, thinking about the fact that the ball of peanut butter in the live trap was undoubtedly old and wouldn’t give off the proper alluring Choosy Rodents Choose Jif scent, so I got up again, cleaned out the trap, gobbed two new big gobs of peanut butter inside and then replaced the trap. Then I sat on the computer for an hour, hoping that the mouse would come out sniffing for a midnight snack, but it was no use and I finally fell asleep in bed, hugging my Mag lite to my chest like a security blanket.
Esteban woke me up when he came home from Anaheim at 1. He had all sorts of questions to ask, things to tell me about Tom and about his trip home, wondering why I had rearranged the kitchen (answer: to make room for the shiny new dishwasher, happy anniversary three weeks early Esteban!), asked about the new makeup mirror screwed into the wall in the bathroom, etc, and then I told him about the second mouse that Scotty had removed and the fact that there was at this very moment a mouse in the bedroom with us, listening to our conversation, rehearsing the tap dance that it was going to perform on our sleeping faces.
He shook his head and said ‘Wow, I just can’t deal with all of this right now.’ And so it was. He was right. In one hour, mourning for Tom, frustration with the airlines, excitement about the dishwasher and the general squickyness over a potential murder that would happen while we slept. So we did what anyone would do in the same situation. We pretended that nothing in the world was the matter and promptly fell asleep. Because it was late and Esteban was thankful to be home and I was thankful to no longer be defending the homestead by myself.
Gah. Fucking mice.
Sadly, right now, the house is the cleanest it has been in months. With Esteban gone, I was a MACHINE. The kitchen actually sparkles because when I cleared off a space, I had no one chasing after me saying ‘Wait! Where are you putting that? I need that!’ or using the freshly cleared space as a convenient spot to dump more stuff. Thus, clean house. It’s so nice. I’m going to miss it so. There’s already a laptop bag on the counter and a bunch of cords splayed out in the living room. I think I’m becoming a mom without having ever passed anything through my cervix. I haven’t yet used the term ‘I’m not the only person who knows how to pick up around here!’ but I feel it dangling on the tip of tongue with a spring trigger. And yet the universe rewards my productivity with what I believe was one of the plagues of Egypt. Seriously? If I find locusts in my bed tomorrow, I am SO selling this house. Because I am NOT going to paint my front door with blood. I’m certain there’s a neighborhood ordinance that frowns upon that.
