Family Daze: Of Mice and Wo(men)

I know you might think it’s silly for a woman who went through natural childbirth twice, to be scared of a harmless little mouse. But I, like most people in the twenty-first century, prefer my rodents outside.
It was only yesterday that I was downstairs in the living room, innocently minding my own business, folding laundry, thinking nothing of rodents and their ways, when I saw a shadow gallop across the floor out of the corner of my eye. So I did what any educated, independent woman would do: I yelled, “Yeeeeeekkk,” and then ran upstairs and locked myself in my office.
When my husband came home from work, I casually explained to him how I wouldn’t normally be afraid of something so harmless, and that the reason I’m sitting on top of my desk is because this particular mouse is part of an unusually large species that looks more like a small Chihuahua.
“Well, where is it?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “For all I know, he could be in the kitchen, underneath the refrigerator, or in my closet trying on shoes. Just go get him!”
An hour later, he walked back into my office. “You can come out now,” he announced triumphantly. “He’s gone.”
“Great! Did you dispose of the b-o-d-y,” I whispered, not wanting the kids to hear. But when he didn’t answer, I became suspicious. “You didn’t find it, did you?”
He slowly shook his head. “But since I didn’t see it, it’s obviously gone,” he said.
Now, you might think I’m being overly cynical, but I wasn’t convinced. This theory might have worked if he had been looking for something a little bigger, like an elephant, but it was clear to me that this mouse was obviously lying low, waiting for another chance to strike. Why, at this very moment, it was probably lurking under the kitchen table, waiting for me to open the refrigerator, so it could charge over my feet and eat up all of the expensive cheese. Or maybe it was sleeping underneath my comforter. Or, for gosh sakes, living in my closet, making a nest inside my good pumps.
So I weighed my alternatives and figured I could either move, hire a professional exterminator, or remain locked in my office until the mouse eventually got bored and wandered away on its own accord.
I finally decided on a less complicated plan that consisted of searching every corner of the house with a flashlight, and then trying to scare it to death by waving my hands around and screaming. So I pulled myself together and looked in every closet and underneath every piece of furniture, trying to determined if the mouse was there, had been there, or could possibly show up there at any moment.
Then I was about to give up and think that maybe, just maybe, my husband was right, I saw a mouse-shaped shadow dart across the floor.
I immediately sprung into action, but my family talked me into calling back our realtor and taking the house off the market. Instead, I went the route my friend Julie suggested. I bought one of those “humane” mouse traps that is really more like a plastic box with clear sides and a door.
According to the directions, all I would need to do is to lure the mouse into the container, and then drive it to a nice empty field and release it back into nature. I pictured myself bravely watching as the mouse ran off into the distance, just like the woman in the heart-wrenching scene in “Born Free,” after she releases the lion she raised in the jungle.
This morning, I was still confident about my decision…until I was faced with the actual possibility of having to drive around the neighborhood, looking for a field, with a mad mouse trapped inside a flimsy plastic box, seat-belted into the front seat of my car.
As I bent down and peered into the box, I imagined seeing a vindictive ten-pound mouse with beady eyes and sharp teeth, glaring at me as if it were trying to decide whether it should wait until I let it loose to tear me to shreds… or if it should just go ahead and open the box itself and get it over with quickly.
So I went I saw that it was empty, I felt like throwing my hands out to my sides and bursting into song. Of course, this also meant that the mouse was still somewhere loose in our house. But between you and me, I think I can learn to live with it.