TUESDAY
I was walking through the kitchen when a small gray figure darted past my feet. A mouse. I was startled, mostly because our current home had been — to my knowledge, anyway — mouse-free up until this point. It vanished quickly, and I reported the news to Alfred.
“Hey… there’s a mouse in the house.”
“A MOUSE?!” he said excitedly.
“Yes,” I said. “And…”
As if to demonstrate my point, the mouse emerged again, sprinting across the living room, with our cat Hootsy hot on its tail. Hootsy has been an indoor cat most of her life (save for when she was a small kitten), so I didn’t have a good sense of her hunting instincts, but she was clearly giving it her best effort. This time, Alfred caught a glimpse of the mouse, and shrieked in surprised delight.
We have a mousetrap. Somewhere. It’s the nonviolent sort of mousetrap, the kind that just traps the mouse so you can drive it out to the middle of the nowhere and send it off to start a new life. My children have gentler hearts than I do, and do not approve of household pests being subjected to capital punishment. However, the trap was boxed up when we moved, and it’s probably in the storage building somewhere. I made a mental note to go poke around and look for it later.
WEDNESDAY
“THERE’S A DEAD MOUSE HEAD IN THE CHAIR!”
It was 6:30 in the morning when Alfred made this horrified declaration. I didn’t really take it seriously, because I was still tired, and because “THERE’S A DEAD MOUSE HEAD IN THE CHAIR!” is the sort of thing that Alfred might say when he’s in the midst of acting wild and imaginative (which he is doing during most of his waking hours). But no, he was being entirely serious. There, in the living room recliner, was the severed head of a dead mouse.
Hootsy sat nearby, purring contentedly, and looking vaguely like Luca Brasi. In this case the head was not intended as a warning, but as a generous gift, to commemorate her violent conquest. Oliver came running in to observe the mayhem, and was both astonished and appalled by the display. I wrapped up the mouse head, threw it away, and sprayed down the chair with Fizzion. Though neither of the boys were particularly happy about the mouse being eaten, they accepted the situation as part of the whole “circle of life” deal.
“You should look for the tail, because I don’t think Hootsy would eat the tail,” Alfred said. I wasn’t sure where he had acquired this information, but sure enough, a few minutes later I stepped on the severed mouse tail. I asked Alfred how he knew Hootsy wouldn’t eat the tail.
“Um, tails are gross,” he said.
THURSDAY
“DAAAAAAAAAAD! THERE’S A MOUSE IN MY ROOM!”
It was around 9 AM when Eileen shouted this. I did take it seriously, because I was fully awake, and all sorts of mouse-related precedent had been set earlier in the week.
“HOOTSY CHASED IT INTO MY CLOSET!” Eileen said excitedly, laughing nervously and beckoning for me to follow her. Sure enough, a very alert-looking Hootsy was standing guard outside the closet. I opened the door, and saw the mouse climbing up the wall. It froze, as if trying to decide how to deal with this situation. Eileen was able to get a good look at it.
“It’s so cute!” she said. “Look at him. Don’t let Hootsy eat him, dad.”
“Well, Hootsy seems pretty determined,” I said. “But I’ll do my best.” I made a series of unsuccessful attempts to capture the mouse, who had a knack for zigging when you expected him to zag, and who used the open-back cubicles that hold Eileen’s clothes to his advantage. Have you ever seen Gore Verbinski’s Mouse Hunt? Imagine a short version of that, set entirely within a single closet, and you’ll have a sense of how spectacularly unsuccessful I was. Eventually, Hootsy dashed out into the living room, as if chasing something, and I assumed the mouse had made a run for it. I couldn’t find it anywhere, and Hootsy seemed stumped, too.
A couple of hours later, Eileen called out again: “DAAAAAAAAAAD! THERE’S A MONSTER IN MY CLOSET!”
I went into her room, and sure enough, there were sounds of something scurrying around behind her closet door. I opened the door and was amazed to see that the mouse had apparently managed to knock several items off the top shelf onto the floor. This time, I was able to catch it: when the mouse darted into the folds of a spare bedsheet, I reached quickly for a lump in the sheet and managed to get a handful of mouse. I carried it outside, and set it down on the front porch. The mouse tentatively left the sheet, and then just… hung out with Eileen and I for a few minutes. It scampered around a bit, then started casually climbing around on the outdoor chairs. I guess when you’ve been chased around the house by a murderous cat, it raises your confidence in other settings. Eventually, it wandered off into the yard.
I texted Rebekah and told her that I had managed to catch Mouse #2.
“Did you drive it a few miles away?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Well, it will be back,” she said.
FRIDAY
“THERE’S A DEAD MOUSE ON THE BACK PORCH!” Alfred cried.
Sure enough, there was a dead mouse on the back porch. Was it the same mouse I had freed the previous day, or a third mouse? It sure looked like the same mouse. Clearly, its newfound confidence had proven a liability, leaving the mouse open to assault from one of the stray cats that wander around the area. Whatever had killed it had seemingly done so for sport, rather than for food, as the mouse’s body remained mostly intact.
A few hours later, the mouse’s body had disappeared. Perhaps it had been retrieved by the creature that had killed it, or perhaps another creature, delighted to find a free snack.
We’ve been in this house for a year and a half, with no signs of mice. And then, for one week, daily mouse drama, involving two separate mice, both of which met a gruesome end.
So what’s the point of this story, exactly? If you’re a mouse, I imagine it reads like something from a Cormac McCarthy novel. If you’re a cat, it probably reads like sports highlights, an account of notable hits and misses. And if you’re me, which I am, well… I dunno. I hear the the voice of Ricky Jay’s narrator from Magnolia: “These strange things happen all the time.”
Back at ya later
Why didn’t you remove the dead mouse from the back porch? Out of curiosity
Of Mice and Province!! To Be Continued!!