It is definitely pre-Winter here in Wisconsin, which is to say that there’s no doubt about the fact that it’s late autumn. The leaves are peaking or, in some cases, more bare than there. I keep spotting turkeys and deer by the dozens, and in one rather traumatic moment on the highway today, one hanging out of the back of someone’s truck. Ah Wisconsin, for all of your charm and beauty, you still manage to fuck it up.
Wisconsin’s wildlife really has been chafing my ass this month, actually. You see, a month ago, I came back from one very long and exhausting business trip, stripped my stifling manmade fibers along my zombie-esque lurch into the bedroom, flipped on the light and immediately spotted IT amongst the bedroom detritus of random socks, camis and whatnot on the floor.
IT being a dead mouse, placed ever so specifically at the foot of our bed.
I screamed for Esteban and then could say no more than “Go IN THERE! GO! LOOK! SEEEEEEE!” and then actually started hyperventilating in the dining room while he did a comedic “What? Where? What? Weet, I don’t see—oh, oh dear. Oh my. Wow. Uh…. Yeah. Shit.” And then made the bad thing go away. He then managed to tarnish his own shining armor by returning back to the house to tell me that it hadn’t had a head.
Fucking hell.
We located a hole in the wall between the garage and the kitchen. A smallish hole, definitely gnawed, definitely mouse-ish, and then squirted some stuff into it, thus, sealing it. I tried to put it out of my mind, and then the Sunday night after everyone was here looking at the pre-autumn leaves (sorry, guys, a little too early I guess), I was working in my office by the sole light of my pc monitor and then Tilly walked in and made the very specific, very creepy meow that in Catish translates to “I have something for you!”. I looked down and saw a shadow of something in her mouth, leapt up and flipped on the overhead light. She dropped it on the rug at my feet, which is, you have to admit, very sweet, much like the endearing moments a girl has with her stalker. Since Esteban was at his Dorkathalon, I couldn’t take the pansy way out, so I hurdled over the cat, grabbed a Glad plasticware bowl (one use that Glad undoubtedly never wants to publicize) and used the lid to scoop the creature into the bowl.
Which revived it.
This is when I had a stroke and died.
Except that I didn’t. Normally, I would have jumped into my car, driven the animal to the Wildlife Sanctuary about two miles away, where there is a ton of ground fodder like the dried corn for the sanctuary’s deer, but in the snack-sized plastic container, I doubted the animal would be able to deal with the lack of air and also, I was in my pajamas. So I went to the front door and let it go under the porch, harboring the faith that it was a leftover mouse from before the seal had been in place and therefore would not find its way back into the house.
When I relayed the event to Esteban, he chastised me for the fact that the mouse would undoubtedly get back in, using its finely tuned rodent memory and I should have gotten in the car, in my pink boxer shorts and taken the mouse to the Mice Who Have Visited Casa Bix Retirement Community. My argument was that if there was still a hole to be accessed, then we have more problems than a single vermin with a very good sense of direction, because it’s not like there was only one mouse left on the planet. In fact, there were probably 100 mice within as many yards distance of our house. If there was a way to get in, then Esteban’s tenuous logic wasn’t going to keep them out.
Enough days passed with no further gifts from our own little Weapon of Mouse Destruction that I started believing that maybe The Mouse That Lived really was just a straggler from after the hole filling. And then.
AND THEN.
On Thursday evening, I was traipsing betwixt my office, Esteban’s office, the bathroom and the kitchen, getting ready for bed, finishing a few odds and ends, doing my evening ablutions, and then I bumped into Tilly in the hall, nosing over a supine body.
I am really getting sick of white mouse underbellies.
Esteban was in the middle of a WoW raid and when I did my standard “Esteban! Come here! Look!” he shouted back “I’m busy!” and I shouted back “I KNOW. But you need to come out here RIGHT NOW.” Because I am a major fucking wiener and damn it, killing a virtual troll or Jabberwocky or whatever is NOT more important than coming to your wife’s rescue. And also, I am fully aware of what a sham it is that I consider myself a feminist but look, do not judge me, a dead (or possibly only mostly dead) mouse on the floor is like the battlefield in the war between the sexes and there are no fucking atheists in fox holes, ok?
This one really was dead, although probably died from shock, as La Femme Attilla did not actually pierce its little body nor inflict a crunching blow upon its head. But what we have here is a fucking situation, people. A situation of mouse proportions.
You should probably know that right now I am writing this from a hotel. I am on a business trip and will never again complain about scratchy underthreaded hotel sheets again.
Ok, I don’t believe me either. But still.
