It’s true that when it comes to regular flies, with their teeth-grating buzzing, kindly Sally tries to “dance” them out. I just smack them, hard. My weapon of choice? Forget a fly swatter or a newspaper—that’s for amateurs. For size and heft, I’ve found the perfect fly-killing tool is a rolled-up New Yorker magazine, which Charlie has piles of. He won’t miss the February 27 issue. Unfortunately, it’s so effective I recently broke a window pane. So I now compromise with AARP Magazine, which now seems to be omnipresent in our home. I use the one with Dave Matthews on the cover.
ALL OF WHICH is a lengthy backstory to this: recently, during dinner, I get up to go to the kitchen to refill the bread basket. And I see it. Amid the friendly array of metal bowls, colorful dishes, and moist cutting boards— Across the top of the stove— Across the metal lip that abuts the wall—
A furry gray thing the size of a stick of butter quickly scuttles, right to left. Long stringy tail. To say I scream would be like saying Beyoncé is slightly confident about her body. The family rushes in to support me, as I collapse. “I saw a mouse!” I shrill.
That is a lie. I feel I have actually seen a small rat, due to the tail. But all of this unwelcome data is coming too quickly. And now, of course, with an attentive audience of four, the thing is gone. The rodent has deployed his five-second performance for the exact moment when Nervous Mom entered the kitchen.
“I mean, like a bear, couldn’t he hear me coming?” I exclaim. “I’m wearing clogs, for God’s sake! Was that really the moment to run across the stove?”
As usual, Charlie insists this is not possible. Why? Our house, I should mention, is a large wooden 1906 craftsman with many nooks and crannies. In the honeycombed crawl space below lives a feral cat that we have dubbed “Rico.”
“So you can’t have seen a mouse,” he says.
At which point, I thank God I have a sensible life partner. My Second Husband. Whose name is Angie. Who has a List.
Although, to be honest, when you type the words “rodent control” into Angie’s List it’s a little horrifying. Word of advice, to pest control people. In selecting images to advertise your business, we’re already a bit freaked out by the grisly details. Think of the gentle artistry of feminine hygiene ads, or Viagra ads. Help us out with feel-good metaphors. We want to see a woman in pink capri pants skipping joyously through a field, or an attractive silver-haired couple chuckling in side-by-side soak tubs in wine country.
For “rodent control” companies, a reassuring image might include a smiling family in matching cardigans enjoying a candlelit picnic on their living room floor. Or perhaps a mom in shorty shorts lolling on that same floor eating Triscuits and reading O Magazine— Think, essentially, people not afraid to come in contact with their floors, as opposite to me, who now traverses my home by hopping as though electrocuted, with my hands over my eyes, screaming “No! No! No!”
No such luck. Scrolling through the ads and coupons, I see intimate color close-ups of rats and mice, with reddish eyes, shiny noses, and trembling whiskers, either outside, gazing victoriously to the sky, Willard-like, or, most memorably, on a cheese plate. That’s right. I see a furry, sparkly-eyed rodent slyly turning to us—essentially, photo bombing—an otherwise tasty-looking cheese plate.
But, oh! To its right, there’s a 30 percent-off coupon for “live animal trapping.” I click on it, cinch my spa robe belt, cross my fingers.
THE VERY NEXT DAY, a pest control specialist comes to my house. He is a youthful tattooed man in blue coveralls named Fabian, whose narrow facial features, truth be told, make him look himself like a mouse. Fabian finds mouse droppings under the sink, indicating that we do indeed have rodents.
I’m elated! Until now, I was the only person in my house who thought I saw a mouse. This means I am not crazy!
My elation fades when I learn Fabian-the-pest-control-guy’s plan.
It’s true that I am not an expert in getting rid of rodents. I guess I was vaguely hoping for some kind of computer-driven laser beam or humane technology involving sonic waves. (SLEEP THRU DENTISTRY!) But no. Fabian is now trundling in an old-fashioned wooden mousetrap, with the gnarly metal spring, two big white glue boards, and, yes . . . a jar of Skippy peanut butter. Creamy style.
Under the stove the glue boards go. We can call Fabian when we catch something. Nothing happens, day after day, so we assume that the mouse simply ran back outside. Then Friday noon, I’m eating a salad, in my home office, and to my disbelief, I see, just a few feet in front of me, a small gray shivering fur ball. It’s a tiny baby mouse, the size of my thumb, plodding around in methodical circles, looking confused, on the shaggy IKEA rope rug under the computer table where I work. Oh my God.
I put my salad down and look for a bucket.
All I can find is a fancy hexagonal gift box full of bath bombs from the cosmetics store Lush. I empty the box in a whoosh of lavender dust and approach the tottering baby mouse. I am making high-pitched screaming sounds in my head.
I try to upend the box over the mouse. But he(?) suddenly develops some unexpected thinking skills and eludes me, darting behind the piano. I close the pocket doors of the office and call Fabian. He tells me to transfer one of the glue traps under the stove to the living room.
Now, I am a proud feminist, but to me, this all falls under a category called “MAN.” So when Charlie comes home twenty minutes later, I assign him to it. Charlie ducks down to pull a glue trap out from under the stove and says, “Whoa.” Never a good sign. One of the glue traps is already occupied by a larger dead mouse. Oh God. The word “infestation” is flashing across my brain pan.
He picks up the second glue trap. I open the pocket doors to the office. From out of nowhere, the baby mouse darts toward him—my mind flashes to the killer bunny in that Monty Python movie.
Charlie screams—that’s a first for him. I swiftly close the doors.
“He’s just sitting here, looking at me,” Charlie narrates, in growing disbelief. “He’s not that smart. Whoa! He just came up and sniffed the trap! He was an inch away!”
“This is horrible!” I exclaim, now actually envisioning the mouse baby’s slow gluey death. It’s so very opposite of Ratatouille, or any other Disney movie.
I open a door and hand Charlie the fancy hexagonal gift box from Lush. He upends the perfumey pink box over the mouse. Under it he slides a record recently pressed by his tirelessly productive indie musician friend Tex. “Vinyl, man, ‘everyone’s’ going back to vinyl,” Tex said. How very true. Particularly when “everyone” has rodents.
Charlie carries the baby mouse outside and releases it. As we are just ten feet away from where Rico the feral cat lives, we’re essentially a meal delivery service. But at least we won’t witness actual violence.
The next night, Sally, Charlie, and I have made a fortress of pillows on our bed upstairs, enjoying Sally’s current favorite show Supernatural. All of a sudden, she exclaims, “Oh no, look!”
And, at our bedroom door, on the second floor, another baby mouse! Staring at us!
“This is a big house!” I yell. “This mouse could go anywhere! We are three humans shrieking aloud in fear as we watch a very noisy TV show about ghosts and demons. Shouldn’t mice be scared off by the sound? Like bears?”