mouse in the house

Sunday, December 16, 2007


Gussie Gus, Marvin or Mr. Mr. asleep on the chair in my bedroom

He's taking a much needed break from his job of flushing little mice out of the cracks, crevices and walls of this old house. Gus has been working the back shift lately, dusk til dawn. While the rest of us (cats- Bleet, Lulu, & Oliver and dogs -Winnie Dixon & Jake) are all ensconced in various beds in the cozy warm second floor of this house, Gussie is prowling the main floor. If I have to get up in the night to let the Noodle dog out to take care of some business, as we pass through the living room we often will spy Gus, all tucked in upon himself, staring diligently at a space in the drywall. Sometimes we'll awaken from our dreamy sleep because of a crash or bang coming from the kitchen or laundry room and Oliver will leap off the bed and thud down the stairs two at a time, realizing that Gussie may need his help. The mouse count is up to 4 now - 3 dead and 1 saved and let go outside "run free little mouse go find your scarf & mitts".

It seems everyone that I talk to has a mouse in the house story these days, maybe it's this cold & bitter weather we're having (?) and I did notice Friday, at the hardware store, a gigantic display of various mouse torture, killing and (a few more humane) deterrent type apparatuses (some kind of sound machine that mice don't like). Friends and people I know are setting traps in their attics & basements. My neighbour Florence was behind me in line at the hardware store, buying a mouse trap. She told me she'd lived in that house for 23 years and she'd just had her first mouse sighting - it scurried across her kitchen floor while she was cooking and she totally freaked (??). She asked me to explain the instructions on the back of the trap package while we were standing there, and I was just "Hey! sorry Florence, talk to the hand ! please ! I don't want to know anything about that killing machine, ask Reg he'll explain it to you".

I prefer to believe that I'm living some kind of symbiotic relationship with the creatures, teeny and small, that live in this house at 29 Black St. Spiders get gently moved to large tropical houseplants, in the summer any bugs (earwigs, beetles, wasp's or ants etc.) that mistakenly wander inside or are brought in, accidentally, by me on cut flowers or freshly hung out laundry are trapped, with my fool proof drinking-glass-postcard-method, and placed outside again. I just have no interest in killing something just because I've decided that I don't like it. I'm not crazy about the cats killing mice but I can kind of rationalize that away - it's nature for them, it's not me playing God with their little mouse lives, and I do take great delight when I arrive on the scene, with my yogurt container, in time to save one. If it were rats or squirrels (that can and do chew wires and stuff) I might be more concerned, -but even then I know I would go down every humane avenue available to me.

Word's probably going to get out around the village and all the little mice will be packing up their troubles and movin' over here to 29 Black Street.

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