My wife and I recently celebrated 12 years of marital bliss. This year we kept it simple, staying at our house together alone, and asking our in laws to watch the kids for the night. We refused to answer the phone, and basked in the quality time together that seems so rare in our wonderful but chaotic lives. All was going well, and it felt like the days of college again, when we first met, with the only urgent weekend obligations we had revolving around food choices and entertainment. And then came our rude, filthy, uninvited guest and everything changed.
This bold fellow did not even knock, he just showed up, staring into my eyes and twitching wildly. His appearance was so sudden that it startled me, and that was the reason why my bride even became aware of his intrusion on our quiet time together. To say I “shrieked” when I saw him at the bottom of the trash can would be a gross exaggeration, if not completely inaccurate. I prefer to say that he gave me a start, or perhaps I took a quick intake of breath – whatever the macho version of the “shriek” might be, that is definitely what I did, but it was certainly not shrieking. In any case, my bodily and verbal response to the small, fuzzy mouse who had just crashed our party and was busy dining on the scraps of hummus and crackers in the trash informed my lovely wife that we were not alone anymore.
And that was a problem. You see, having grown up in northern New York, the arrival of a mouse in our house was really not shocking to me, nor was it a cause for alarm about the general tidiness of our house or the various cracks, crevices, and holes that may have allowed this little fellow entrance. The mouse had entered the house for one reason – because winter is coming and it is getting cold outside. Mice find a way in to anywhere when it gets cold. I grew up experiencing this annual rodent migration, and find it as natural as finding bee’s nests under the eves of the house every September. Had I stumbled on to this little vermin by myself, my response would have been quick, decisive, and deadly. The mouse, I knew, had to die. And so did the squadron of intruders he brought with him. You see I also know from experience that the mouse is not generally a rogue wanderer, like, say, a shark. Mice usually tend to travel in packs, and now that I knew they were here, that they had made the preliminary moves in this battle, I needed to move into my “Shock and Awe” retaliatory phase of the battle to drive them out. But there was one problem – my wife wanted to “see” the mouse.
“Oh, he’s cute” she said. Cute was actually the word she used. For the mouse. Who had invaded our house and most likely invited his entire extended family along to move in. I stared at her. “What are you going to do with him?” She asked next, knowing full well what I intended to do, because I had already donned my camouflage bandana and strapped on my Rambo Elite Style Buck Knife tm to my hip. “I’m going to make an example of him, little Miss” I growled back. Actually, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her. That was enough. “You are NOT going to kill him!” she said. It was not a question, it was a statement. “So what do you suggest?” I managed to ask. “Let’s bring him down by the lake and let him go” she answered. I knew that was coming. We had done this before with a mouse that we found shortly after moving into our house. It was the same time of year, the fall, and I remember dropping that little rodent off at “the lake” in an act of what was supposed to be supreme humanity. The little thing dropped to the ground, immediately began to shiver, and ran toward the nearest house, which was only about 100 yards from the shore. When I watched the weather that night, they said it got down to 35 degrees. The word “mouse-cicle” kept crossing my mind. I took some consolation in the fact that the critter had most likely already set up residence in the house near the lake and was, at this moment, texting the crew from our house to come on over – unless, of course, they were texting him to come back.
Then there was another time when my wife and kids decided to bestow the gift of life on “Lucky,” a small mouse that they had somehow corralled into a large glass bowl before I had gotten home for the evening. I was greeted at the door by two excited, wide eyed children shouting “Guess what, Dad? We’ve got a new pet! His name is Lucky!” The extreme irony of the name was that this particular P.O.W. or M.O.W. if you prefer, ended up dying during the first night of his captivity, presumably from massive cardiac arrest and countless attempts to scramble out of his glass enclosure. I found the body early the next morning, and told the kids that Lucky had been released to a life of leisure and relaxation down by “the lake”. The kids were angry at me for some time, until I made peace by buying them a goldfish. The goldfish eventually joined Lucky, but he found his way to “the lake” through our septic system after a full and happy life in his half gallon bowl.
So now my wife was staring at me, with that same look of disbelief, that I could possibly consider taking the life of this poor creature. I kept wishing she had never seen it. You see, someone in every household is responsible for doing the type of “dirty work” that the rest of the family would rather not see. Every family needs a covert operator, a hit man, an enforcer. This is the person called upon to “deal with” issues involving the ugly and undesirable pests that simply must be eliminated from a home: flies, spiders, wasps, the things that scratch and chirp in the attic or basement and yes, occasionally even the adorable fuzzy rodents that we now faced. If we had a cat, I would not need to fill this role. Unfortunately, I have an allergy to cats, and I have never much trusted the feline species anyway. Well, that’s not exactly true – cats actually frighten me and make me nervous. Something about them – the condescending way they are always looking at us humans, like there is some kind of joke that we just will never get, has always made me uneasy. We do have two dogs, however. They do not look at us like the cats do. They just want to be with us, and seem to miss us when we are gone, and do a respectable job of barking when anyone is within what feels like a few miles of our house – whether the person is a dangerous stranger or someone they have seen hundreds of times. And that is very annoying. They also scratch at the glass of the sliding door and create quite an impressive ruckus when the squirrels and chipmunks decide to partake in the bounty of seed and suet at our birdfeeders, and when you release these seemingly vicious hounds they tear after these creatures with ample zest and fervor. It was therefore surprising and quite a disappointment to me that these same dogs – these “posers” of the hunt and extreme blood lust, had allowed an unknown number of smaller, slower, and more timid rodents to enter our house, apparently running over their keen canine noses each night to get around. I thought it might be time to rethink the whole cat thing after all.
“I won’t kill the mouse.” I told her. She didn’t need to ask again. I knew that she trusted my word on the subject. After all, we covert operators do not enjoy this work. It’s not like we want to be judge, jury and executioner to the fuzzy mouse anymore than another family member. We just realize what needs to be done and we do it. We are able to act on reason rather than emotion. Like Spock from Star Trek “the original Trek which was so much better than any that came after”, we understand that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” or, in this case the needs of the rodent, and we act accordingly. It’s simple logic really – or at least logic of some kind. And if that is not enough explanation for you, I direct you to another quote, by Jack Nicholson in the movie “A Few Good Men” when he shouts loudly and in a rather uncontrolled tone at a young Tom Cruise “You don’t want the truth, because you can’t handle the truth!”
So the first mouse lived. I will not disclose the whereabouts of his release, except to say that I deny any responsibility for said mouse or mice that turn up in my neighbor’s house and/or shed. But, as I mentioned before, the story was far from over. There were other interlopers to find and terminate – and the rest of the force would be terminated with extreme prejudice, away from the watchful, naïve eye of my spouse and kids. To my dismay, I found that my arsenal for the upcoming battle had gotten quite low. I was down to just one mouse trap. And that simply would not do. I had learned from my former experiences that in the earliest engagements of this deadly game, it is best to catch these vermin unaware by setting a ridiculously large number of traps at strategic locations in the house. I had also learned that it was best to set them in places where the dogs would not inadvertently get there snouts snapped while enjoying a free peanut butter treat, but in a way I couldn’t help but feel that those lazy soldiers had it coming. So I knew now that more weaponry was needed from the local hardware store. But I needed to stop on the way at the pharmacy, so I decided to take a chance and see if they might have include a few traps in their inventory. They did. In fact, they had a disturbing number of various contraptions designed to exterminate mice. I found myself asking why a business whose primary focus is to provide substances which help people to heal and/or feel better would concern itself to such a degree with the destruction of the rodent population. I wondered if maybe the manager of the store had himself encountered an invasion, either within the store itself, or at his home, and this was simply his personal cache of weaponry for that purpose.
If that was the case, I doubt that he was very successful in his efforts. I immediately became aware of the old expression “trying to build a better mouse trap”, and realized that this old adage was based on a truth that continues to this day. To me, the only effective trap is the old wooden kind, with the metal pull-back bar, activated by a spring that attaches to a plastic “bait trap”. You know this device will work because if you inadvertently trip the trap while setting it, the force of the metal bar appears strong enough to break a finger. The pharmacy had none of these traps. Instead, they had some kind of smaller, plastic imitation trap that looked like the items I have seen to keep potato chip bags closed – not surprisingly I think they are called “Chip Clips”. “Try Me!” It beckoned. I activated the “Clip” and it locked into place so that its jaws were opened and ready for prey. When I triggered the thing, it closed down on where the mouse would have been with enough force to possibly give the poor thing a knock on the noggin strong enough to induce a slight jolt – possibly causing slight disorientation or a mild headache. Surprisingly, these weak and useless contrivances were twice as expensive as my trap of choice. I suppose people get their money’s worth by using them to frustrate and maybe injure pests while also keeping their snacks fresh, but I was unimpressed with the design.
The next items I looked at made even less sense to me. “Glue Traps”. That is what they were called – really! Flat pieces of plastic which held morsels of food as mouse bait but were coated with a super strength adhesive which held the tiny diner’s feet firmly in place. I remembered “Lucky,” and I hoped that when I got home I could find an instructional video online about how exactly to get the mouse unattached from the trap – pliers, maybe? Or perhaps you just shook it violently while the rodent hung upside down until the force of your motion released it. The Glue Trap was, after all, advertised as a more humane way to deal with the common mouse. And so was the “Spin Trap”, which was made by the same company. The idea behind this clever piece of craftsmanship was contained in it’s name – to spin the mouse around, thus confusing it, I suppose, and then moving the trap and it’s befuddled passenger to a new location for release. It was round and about as big as a tea cup saucer, and it had a winding mechanism at the top. The bait was placed within, and then an entrance way invites the unsuspecting rider into a whirling dervish type experience before being forcefully relocated. I liked the thing, and I wound it up several times and then watched it spin. I wondered if the mouse’s tail most often wound up inside or outside of the ride. In either case, I had no desire to watch shivering, nauseous mice, most of which had lost their tails from the spinning, released near “the lake” and stumbling around before following me home or moving into other houses in the neighborhood. The best case would be if these dizzy animals made friends with other relocated mice, many of whom would be walking around with leaves, sticks, and various debris stuck to their small paws after being shaken loose from the Glue Trap.
They had other items as well, most of which were made primarily of plastic and which seemed highly inadequate for the war I intended to wage at my house. So I left. And I did find my traps at the hardware store – I was extremely happy that they are continuing to produce them, and I was even happier that they continue to be far less expensive than the newer fangled mouse traps I encountered. My retaliatory actions began shortly after returning home, and, like a “newbie” on Facebook, I found myself obsessively checking my trap line every fifteen minutes or so for the next few days.
I won’t bore you “or gore you,” with the details of the ensuing battles that took place near the garbage can under our kitchen sink, or during the “Storage Room Standoff” where the enemy got far more than the bird seed and dog food they had been pilfering for weeks. I don’t find it necessary to inflate my own ego by retelling the details of each cunning and masterful move I designed in my War Room and then used to drive the invaders from our home making it safe once again to pursue our lives, our liberty, and the knowledge that we were not sharing our Cheese Puffs with the vermin. I really don’t need to dwell on the specifics of these things to feel victorious. I’ll just say that I do believe General Patton would have been impressed with the plans and undertakings and leave it at that.
But I do think that there are some larger lessons to be learned from my recent rodent invasion. I can sum up the reminder it offered me quite easily: newer isn’t always better. And neither is the more expensive stuff. While looking at the wide array of anti-mouse weaponry, I thought about all of the other items that have been labeled “new, improved, stronger, faster, better able to induce the envy of your neighbors, etc., “ and I realized how often that is false. I grew up in what seems to be the last generation of people who believed that the longevity of an item was directly related to your care, respect, and maintenance of the item. Today when one of these “better, newer, shinier” objects breaks, it seems that many people are clueless how to fix it, assume it will be cheaper to buy a new one and simply throw the thing out. If you don’t believe me, take a look around your neighborhood this week on “trash day”. Lately I have counted numerous “old televisions” sitting on the side of the road or near garbage cans. You may assume these sets no longer work – guess again. To date, I have bought one television at my house – it is a flat screen and it gives us more room in the family room. It is fair to say I have picked up at least a dozen of these “trash t.v.’s” in the last few years and all but one of them has worked just fine. I often sell them, or trade one out with my small office t.v., or just give them to someone who needs one. The average price of the flat screen in probably five or six hundred dollars. And we throw out a television in fine working condition to replace it with one that is “better”. But the problem is bigger than that. Sometimes the things that we have used for years – whether they are material items, or ways of doing things, or family traditions, truly are the best ways. I think we all need to beware of throwing out the old for the new simply because our society has pressured us to do so in the spirit of conformity. I think we all need to pause and examine the new mousetraps we are buying in our lives and question our motives for doing so…
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