My Mouse, My Company

Mice are attracted to me. In fact, I will go so far as to say that animals are attracted to me, being that there was this one time my husband literally had to fight a goat over me at my friend's ranch. But that is another story for another time. I want to clarify once more - mice are attracted to ME, I however, am not easily returning the sentiment.

The first memory I have of mice finding some sort of way to intrude into my life was when I went to sleep away camp for the very first time, at the age of nine, in Wildrose, Wisconsin. A couple of weeks into my stay at bunk 1B, my cubbie full of clothes became home to a mother mouse and her brand new brood of micelings. Out of 14 kids, 14 possible cubbies, it had to be mine. Have you ever seen new born baby mice? They look like tiny naked piglets. They are less than an inch big, a transparent pink, and blind. And a mama mouse never has just one baby, nooooooo, she had to lay a load of about 20 or so on my clothes. Some of them, uh, how shall we say, were not really moving, or breathing for that matter.

We had a mouse problem, on and off, for years in our home. First we find the droppings and then the quest begins. Well, many houses at some point find themselves playing the "cat" and mouse game. Usually the problem is confined to the kitchen area, or the main floor. Well wouldn't you know it, in my parents' home, there are five bedrooms and that damn mouse is gonna find its way into one of them. Whose do you think it was?

My parents' have a bedroom on the main floor not too far from the kitchen, but the mouse wouldn't dare enter there. Yes, this mouse found MY bedroom, but that is just the beginning of this story.

I had no idea there was a mouse in my bedroom when I returned home from a trip to Israel. One of the many things American Jews, who only eat kosher food took advantage of while visiting Israel in the early 90's, was bringing back to America the bountiful collection of candy, chocolate and gum that somehow was deemed kosher in Israel, while the same brand in the U.S. was not. I was no exception to this practice. I brought home a new supply of Wrigley's gum and Mars bars to add to my dwindling collection which I kept stashed in my closet.

When I walked into my bedroom closet after being in Israel for three weeks, I was terribly jet lagged and non - functional. I went to put the bag of candy away before hitting the sack and noticed some old gum and candy wrappers looked a bit shredded on the floor. I just figured the candy had fallen and they were run over by a vacuum or something. I shut the lights and got into bed, and I was out like a light.

The next morning afternoon, I awoke and threw back my covers with gusto and thought I had been sleeping with raisins in my bed. What were those black pebble looking things around my legs? Oh SH$#, no literally SH$# . I had been sleeping in rodent SH$#. The shredded wrappers??? There is a mouse in my room and it has been in my bed. Holy mother of crap, to the shower, to the shower!!!

I immediately did what any young girl would do in this pesty situation. I went to Daddy. He put a trap in my closet before bed the next night. After changing sheets and doing my own home fumigation, I did get back into my bed, (I was so jet - lagged). It took no more than two minutes when I heard it - the SNAP!!! Of course, I was not venturing over to my closet, that is also what Daddy's are for. And the next morning, there it was, in it's fat, Israeli candy eating, dead glory. And mice have continued to haunt me ever since, on and off, for years.

Every day I hear the tapping in the wall behind the refrigerator. It has kind of become family. The only reason I don't mind so much, is because they are not actually in my house. That wall is connected to the garage, and the garage is where they are caught and disposed of. (uhh, my apologies to animal lovers and PETA supporters, yada yada yada, I really don't feel that bad).

I would like to officially seal the hole outside my house that they are entering from, but you know, life gets in the way, something more important comes up, we forget about it, we move on. And the tapping sound becomes my only company when my husband is away on business and the kids are sound asleep. When we get rid of one mouse, there are like 7 more waiting in its place. They will all somehow find there way into my house and into my life. What can I say, mice like me.