I was reading Richard Dawkins’s autobiography by the kitchen fire on a snowy, cold late afternoon this past week when faint, oddly alien sounds interrupted my reverie. I listened intently. Hah! Those noises were familiar! To escape this frigid winter mice had probably squeezed into the basement through unnoticed slits in our elderly home’s exterior walls. (These little shape-shifting rodents can ooze through minuscule openings with ease.)
Darn! Overwhelmed by disorganization and confusion after a huge SUV had barreled into the house in last few days of 2012, I’d forgotten to book in the pest control people last spring.
Mouse invasion preparations had been the last thing on my mind.
Now, two well-aged mouse memories made me chuckle as I looked up the number I needed.
When my tidy mother and I arrived at our Elk Lake summer cottage in the early1950s she’d opened the kitchen drawer to tuck more dishtowels inside- and exposed a mouse giving birth! The little rodent had made a snug nest in a leftover old towel. (She’d lived in the drawer while, based on a plethora of droppings around her nest.)
Anyway, Mom gave a surprised yelp; the two species gaped at each other in shock. Recovering first, she quickly gathered the towel ends together to prevent escape, then moved the family to the forest fifty feet from our back door. She thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and laid traps everywhere, catching dozens. Our landlord later told us that the past winter had been unusually harsh; his family had experienced the same problem.
Now my local pest control service answered, but put me on hold, so I sat back to recall another memorable invasion.
In 1968 Joe and I had just moved into our first home in Northville, Michigan. I’d landed a job as a special education teacher at Hawthorn Center, a children’s psychiatric facility connected to Northville State Hospital, three miles away. Our elderly little clapboard duplex, situated at the edge of a large field across from the racetrack near the center of town, was comfortable and affordable.
A few days after moving in I wearily returned home, dumped my boots and jacket in the hall, and made my way into the living room. I’d fix a nice cup of tea before unpacking more things and beginning dinner preparations. Joe would be returning soon…
What was that?? I stopped in my tracks, listening. Were those weird scrabbling noises coming from the oven? Curious, I continued into the kitchen. Teeny thumps, the patter of thimble-sized feet and high-pitched squeals did sound eerily like a party was going on inside it…but that was ridiculous!
Cautiously, slowly, I opened the oven door…and released an EXPLOSION of mice! Well over a dozen terrified rodents rocketed out of the oven to scatter in all directions. Stunned, I fell backward: our combined mouse/girl shrieks blended into farce. Their frantic flight out the stove’s back and front side, and even through the top burners, seemed to take forever. Mice flooded the kitchen! Then, seconds later, every rodent simply vanished. But I knew better. They were right there, hiding.
I staggered into the living room and flopped onto the couch, trying to gather my wits. There was a tiny scream! Then silence.
I leapt off the sofa and yanked away the cushions. A mouse lay there, stone dead, right where I’d put maximum weight. I’d squashed it.
Arghh! We were overrun!
This was too much. We’d just moved in, so there was no phone in place yet. I ran up the stairs, dived into bed and pulled the covers over my head. Joe was due any time now; we’d sort it out then. Meanwhile, I needed to calm down in a warm, dark place (just as that army of mice was doing, I thought, ruefully.)
We’d routinely dealt with these rodents the first week of every summer on Elk Lake years ago, so I wasn’t in the least afraid, just shocked speechless by how many we were harboring!
Half an hour later we walked next door to ring our landlord’s bell. He’d just returned home from his law office to find us on his doorstep. We three traipsed back into our kitchen armed with a flashlight. Sure enough, the oven had hosted a party; droppings and bits of straw and fur tufts were everywhere.
I’d made beef stew on the stovetop yesterday and noticed nothing. But now, alerted, we found mouse poop everywhere, even around our unpacked boxes.
Our embarrassed landlord apologized and went straight out to buy lots of traps. He promised to check them every day while we were at work, which cheered me up. I didn’t want to come home, after working with desperate children, to find bodies everywhere…
Now, at Sunnybank forty-five years later, I booked an appointment to halt the latest mouse move-in from their digs in the park across the street. (Just before ringing for help I’d noticed three tiny poop deposits on the bathroom rug.
No doubt about it. They’re baack…)
And, once again, though knowing all about their staggering birth rate, my preparation for this annual invasion has been a dime short (I’m always looking for ways to save money) and too many days late.
Dummy!