Mouse season has begun ~ October 19, 2000

David Heiller

Mouse season started at our house on Sunday, October 15. Cindy had found some mouse pebbles in a drawer in the bathroom vanity the day before. Her make-up sponge had been gnawed on pretty well too. Must have been a female mouse.

“Time to set the mouse trap,” Cindy told me.

I found the trap under the bathroom sink, which is its permanent location. I smeared peanut butter on it, then re-set it. I knew the action would start soon, and I wasn’t disappointed.

“Mouse in the trap, “Cindy hollered matter-of-factly when she got up Sunday morning. She called it out like a ship’s bosun might call, “Officer on board.”

Some people panic a bit with a mouse in a trap, even if it is dead. Not Cindy, although her voice did have a tone that said, “Please don’t wait too long to get rid of it.”

I lifted out the dead mouse by the tail, carried it outside, and flung it toward the back of the outhouse, which by the end of this winter will look like Boot Hill.

“We should keep track of all the mice we catch,” I said. Cindy agreed that that was a grand idea, so she wrote “Mouse” on the calendar for October 15.

She wrote it again the next day too.

I might be able to get rid of the mouse entry-way into our house. They come in somewhere behind the vanity. But that would mean moving the vanity, which would mean taking out some screws and unhooking the water lines and drain pipe. But if I found the spot where they got in and plugged it, I have a hunch they would find a new way in.

And maybe I could plug that spot, and the next one, and maybe eventually we would have a mouse free house.

And what fun would that be?

Maybe it’s a hunter’s instinct, the same one that sends me and 100 million other Americans after deer and bear, squirrels and grouse, bass and walleyes.

Ronnie Roberts has his grizzly bears, I have my mice.

Perhaps after all those years living with mice in the 
house, we got to be a little bit lighter on our feet.

It’s something I inherited from my mother. (Blame your parents, I always say). We had mice poking around in our house when I was a kid, and Mom seemed to take it in stride with a heavy sigh like she did everything else.

I recall one time when I was in high school, playing Scrabble with her at the kitchen table. We heard some scurrying under the kitchen sink. (Yes, it was under the sink. Is there a pattern here?) Mom told me to set the trap, and I did, and she hadn’t so much as counted her word before we heard the trap snap and there was a shrew. It was about the size of a quarter. We both thought that was pretty neat.

I read in the paper last week that we are supposed to have a real winter this year, complete with snow and cold weather. The mice seem to know that too. They don’t need El Nino and La Nina to figure it out. They just head for the Heillers.

Well, mice, we are waiting. The traps are set, and we can’t wait to write your name on the calendar.