So, I'm sitting here, thinking about what I can write about next for your entertainment. It has to be funny. As I'm thinking, I'm tapping my finger thoughtfully against my chin. It makes me look like I'm concentrating. I like to look like that sometimes. I know...Hubby, do not read beyond this if you think I've made you look like a fool thus far. You are not going to like what follows. Trust me on this. I know I've said that to you before but I mean it this time, trust me. You are not going to like this.
Please allow me to tell you about something that happened at our house a long time ago. This story does not involve either of my two favorite subjects, food or my children. It doesn't contain a combination of those two things. It does contain my absolute least favorite things in the whole world.........
Yes......MICE....or a mouse, anyway.
This story takes place a long time ago, I'm thinking about 8 or 9 years. Hubby and I had been married a year or two. I was still in school at Morehead State. He was working nights at Miller Brothers Coal. We'd exited the newlywed phase of our relationship as will be demonstrated later in this tale. We lived in a single wide mobile home in the High Bottom section of Louisa.
At the time we were experiencing a rabid infestation of the above mentioned rodent. I despise mice. Really, I do. They creep me out beyond anything else in this world. I have nightmares about mice. They are disgusting to the millionth degree and I hate them. I know I shouldn't hate another one of God's creatures but I can't help myself. I've tried to explain to Hubby that it is not something I have control over, this dramatic reaction I have when I see one of the evil creatures. I scream and run away. There's nothing else I can do. It's beyond my control to do anything else. It is an immediate and instantaneous reaction and I can not curb it. Unless I'm in church. If you were in church with me the night we had a mouse running through the sanctuary, you know that I did not give in to this impulse. You would remember it if I had. It took every ounce of self control I had not to jump from my pew and run out of the building. It was the most stressful and uncomfortable church service I've ever endured. You try sitting in a crowded pew with your legs up the entire service wearing patent leather knee boots. It ain't easy.
I digress, again. Anyway, this story takes place a long time ago. As I said, we were experiencing an infestation of biblical proportions. Well maybe not that bad but it seemed bad at the time. I nearly gave hubby a stroke and mortified him beyond his wildest nightmares when I came barrelling out of the house one afternoon screaming. That was when I opened my sink cabinet and saw the gross little bald tail of one as it scurried under or through the cabinet along my drain pipe. If I recall correctly, and I always do, Hubby told me to be quiet before the neighbors heard. He took a look and didn't see anything. He may or may not have thought I was insane. He never really said. He placed a piece of tin cut from a disposable pie pan over the hole and went about his business. I spent the rest of the day afraid to open a door for fear of being attacked by the little beast and his brethren.
Because I hate mice and all they stand for, I immediately endeavoured to place traps all over the trailer. Now, while I hate mice, I hate the idea of cleaning up their brains or guts more so I did not go with the traditional Tom and Jerry style traps. I bought glue traps. At the time, no price would have been too high. Some retailer could have made a fortune off of me. I would've paid whatever they'd asked. As it was, I didn't have to pay much and I bought dozens. Actually it was probably only a couple but I could have bought dozens, that was my state of mind.
I put glue traps where they ran. We'd figured out that they ran along the bottom of my range, across the kitchen staying close to the cabinets until they could duck behind or beneath the refrigerator. Sometimes they would go through my bedroom, which was right off of the kitchen, along the wall into my bathroom. So, I laboured to place a glue trap in places where they could not be avoided. I put one beside of the stove and one in the corner of my bedroom. Why not in front of the stove? Because I knew that when Hubby came in at 4 am he was in the habit of turning the light on in the hood over the stove so that he could see to make himself a snack before going to bed. I'm always thinking about him, you know. It's always been that way.
The following morning, after I'd strategically placed the trap in the kitchen, I was woken by a noise, a loud thumping sound. It caught my attention but unless it was a mouse the likes of which I'd never seen and had no desire to encounter, it didn't concern me so I went back to sleep. I found out the next day what had happened. And oh boy did I laugh. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.
Hubby had come in from work just like always. He'd gone to the stove and turned on the light just like always. When he'd placed his foot on the floor, he'd stepped on something, a lump of something that made a squealing sound under the pressure of his foot. He quickly saw that he'd stepped in my sticky trap which had worked quite effectively at its intended purpose as he'd also stepped on a mouse that had stepped on the sticky trap. The loud thumping sounds I'd heard was him hopping on one foot trying to sling the trap and the mouse off and hitting my lower cabinets in the process. It didn't work. It was a good sticky trap.
So, how did we, or rather, he resolve this issue? He took his sock off and threw then entire mess onto my front porch. He was so upset by the entire ordeal that he planned to leave the mouse there, so I could see it when I left for school. That would teach me a lesson! How dare I leave a mouse trap out and catch a mouse without telling him about it! He showered and what not then had a change of heart. He knew how terrified I was of mice so he retrieved the thing, pulled his sock free and disposed of it in a way that would not require me to see it. He could have gotten away with the whole thing. I would have never known about his encounter other than to know that he'd disposed of a trapped mouse had he not told me.
I know what you're thinking, "So why did he tell you? That's a little embarrassing. I would've kept it to myself." I agree completely. It was completely embarrassing for him. But my Hubby was Green when Green wasn't cool, to paraphrase a country song. He told me because he wanted to know if his sock could be saved. He wasn't about tossing out a perfectly good sock just because it had some industrial strength rodent-catching glue and disgusting, vomit-inducing mouse cooties on it. And I'll freely admit that I tried to remove some of the glue from the sock. Alas, it could not be saved and it was disposed of.
But that is not the end of this infestation. One day, after returning from the dollar store where I'd purchased items like toilet paper that belonged in my master bathroom, I walked through the bedroom to deposit them in said bathroom. I looked over to the glue trap in the corner and met the eyes of another one. I screamed, threw my bags hither and yon and ran, not just out of the room but out of the house. I left, went to Martin County and fully intended to spend the entire day there. Hubby was working and wouldn't get home until 10 pm, it was a Saturday so he got off earlier. I couldn't stay there all night though so I went to do some grocery shopping. Smart, right? No. When I got home I had to put all of the groceries away. I turned on all of the lights and turned the TV up really loud, hoping the noise would convince the little beasts that it was not a good idea to come out. I stomped through the kitchen like my feed were embedded in concrete. After the groceries were put away, I parked myself on the recliner with the foot rest and my feet up and didn't move for some time.
I couldn't live like that though. I couldn't stand the stress. That was a long time ago, back before I had responsibilities and some idea what real stress actually was. It was before my hair turned gray. I decided that I would cover the mouse up with a grocery bag so that I knew it was hidden from view and that would lighten my burden a little. When I ventured back into my bedroom, I was horrified to find that the mouse was no longer on the trap. It had escaped and all that was left was little bits of fur. So, these traps could hold a 170 lb human male but not a 6 oz mouse when confronted my a screaming virago that likely scared the bejesus out of it. Of course, I returned to my perch on the recliner and didn't move until hubby came home.
We've had numerous encounters with rodents since then. I've handled them no better. I don't expect to handle it any better in the future. Trust me on this. If you see me scream and run from the room, you know what's up as it is the only thing that gets a reaction like that from me.
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