Mouse in the House

      One early evening in October of 2008, Mike propped the door open to the backyard so the cat could come and go as she pleased. I was not keen on this idea even if it was only to be for an hour or so, but Mittens had just moved to Lawrenceville from Mike's Flowery Branch house, and Mike was worried about her getting lost. It was only a few minutes later when I heard Mittens coming up the stairs, “that is the sound of a cat with something in her mouth,” I said, the tell-tale tune of a conquest was familiar to me from the cat of my youth, the infamous Gomez.

      Mike and I met Mittens at the top of the stairs wherein she dropped something at our feet. The little mouse was not only still alive, but it was virtually uninjured as it righted itself on its feet and sprinted to the kitchen and behind the refrigerator!

       We then had a lost mouse in the house.

       Mittens at that point lost interest in the critter because a balled up piece of paper had caught her attention. I shut the door to the backyard, never to be propped open for feline again. Mike drove to the grocery store to purchase mouse traps.

       He got those sticky tape things putting one on each side of the refrigerator. Days went by. Not even so much as a dust bunny touched those sticky traps. There was a lost mouse in the house – when was it going to make its next appearance?

      The holidays arrived. Mike got us a new refrigerator for Christmas. He was reluctant, when the Sears man came with the new appliance, to pull the old refrigerator from its corner – what was he going to find back there? Well, all that was back there were a couple of small dust bunnies. No mouse tracks! (the old fridge used to pull out easily – I had cleaned back there from time to time over the many years!) Could it be that perhaps the mouse had found its way out of the house and was no longer around?

       Weeks went by. One day in January, Mike announced when he left work before I did that he was going to bake meatloaf for dinner. I arrived home and opened the door expecting to be greeted with the wonderful smells of food cooking in the oven. Instead I saw every fan in the house whirring away, and the stove was in the middle of the kitchen floor.

        I had a feeling we were not having meatloaf for dinner that night!

        "You know when you are at Boy Scout Camp and at night the counselor announces it is time to extinguish the campfire for the evening, and all the boys stand up and pee on the fire to put it out? You know that smell?”

        I told Mike I was not familiar with the smell of boys urinating on a campfire, but I was gagging over the thought! Mike said that when he turned on the oven to pre-heat, an odor of hot urine began to permeate throughout the house!

        The mouse had been living, and peeing, in the stove! We did not use it often enough to ward the rodent away from that nice warm, cozy environment.

        Mike said that we were never using that stove again, and he dragged it out onto the deck. I looked into some openings on the back of the stove – there was insulation inside – who wouldn't want to live there? Suspended in the insulation was a little troll doll - it looked like something from the Twilight Zone, just hanging there in no-where land. I wanted to rescue the doll that must have wandered under the stove years ago (and how it came to be suspended in stove insulation is too creepy to speculate upon)! I wanted to retrieve the troll, but Mike put his nose to it and became ill – the troll doll was thrown away with the stove.

        In the space in the kitchen where the stove had been, the stove I had never pulled out and cleaned behind, – there were giant dust bunnies, several cat toys (from 16 years' worth of cats in the house before Mittens)..... and mouse tracks. Mike did not want to install a new stove until the lost mouse in the house was gone.

       Mike went to the store and bought more mouse traps. - the kind with the spring like the ones we grew up with that you put cheese in for bait? Only these new ones have pictures of cheese on them. Why would a mouse be attracted to a picture of cheese? Anyway, Mike put one on either side of the refrigerator and one in the spot where the stove is supposed to be.        One night one of the traps sprang – but there was nothing there – we don't know if the mouse escaped, or if Mittens did it, or some strange vibrations made it clamp shut. But there was no mouse.

      Time passed. Mike brought an instrument home from the lab that can detect heat behind the wall – it picks up the heat of living animals! There was no sign of life behind the wall where the stove goes, none in the wall with the pipes for the sink, and none in the wall behind the refrigerator. Could it be that the lost mouse in the house had found its way out? Maybe it was in the old stove when we got rid of it? We bought a new stove and hooked it up.

      One night Mike was reading in the music room when he noticed Mittens in a crouched, hunting position staring at the microwave cabinet in the kitchen. “have you found the mouse finally,” Mike asked as he went to the kitchen and rolled the cabinet away from the wall. There was nothing back there. But then Mittens crouched in front of the shelf unit next to the microwave cabinet. It was not on wheels, but Mike was able to move it a smidgen away from the wall.

      Something furry started to scurry!

      The furry thing scooted beyond the shelf unit into the sunroom and went along the wall behind furniture. Mittens and Mike followed it. The furry thing got to the end of the sunroom and started along the wall of the music room, still behind furniture. But at the end of the bookcase, the creature was out of places to hide behind. Mittens and Mike were at the end of the bookcase waiting. The furry thing turned around and retraced its steps behind furniture along the wall of the music room and then the sunroom and then behind the shelf unit in the kitchen and the microwave cabinet and then the refrigerator.

       The lost mouse in the house had turned into a found fat rat!

       A rat! Mittens must have brought not a mouse into the house that night back in October, but a baby rat. And in the months since then, the rat had feasted on the cat food sitting in the bowl on the kitchen floor, and the water in another bowl on the kitchen floor, and the rat had a cushy, warm environment with plenty of places to hide from a mostly indifferent cat and two humans who never cooked. How could those two humans have been so clueless?

       Mike went to the store to purchase some rat poison. He moved the cat food and water from the kitchen floor. If we made the rat uncomfortable enough, and weak enough, we might finally be able to get it out of the house.

       Now, I was thinking that the rat was keeping to the kitchen – it would not dare to venture down the hallway to the bedrooms, would it? The rat would be too exposed, and the presence of the cat would certainly keep the rat near the kitchen. We even made Mittens stay in the house when we were at work – Mitten's job, and let's face it, it was the least she could do considering she had brought this all upon us in the first place, was to keep the rat from going into the rest of the house. And for some reason, I believed this was what was happening – the rat was getting thirsty, but staying in the kitchen for fear of the cat.

       A few days passed. One morning I got up and went in the bathroom to shower. After I got dressed, I turned out the bathroom light and walked into the dark bedroom in my bare feet. And I put my bare feet into my empty shoes. Then I gave Mike a kiss and went to work.

       About an hour later, my phone rang. It was Mike. “I'm standing on the edge of the bathtub in our bathroom! I am naked! I was about to step into the shower stall, when the rat came running out from behind the toilet and made a mad dash for the bathroom door. But the door is closed and the rat has been bouncing off of it and pitching a fit! I got up on the edge of the bathtub, but the rat is right here! Any advice?”

       Oh my gosh I was laughing so hard! Picturing a naked Mike with a phone to his ear frantically telling me about a rat repeatedly ramming the door just inches away from him was hysterical! Then Mike said, “Oh wait, the rat just went into the shower stall.” Still on the phone with me, Mike shut the door to the stall. The rat was not happy! Mike got the cat to see how Mittens would react to the sight of the rat. Mittens was oblivious on one side of the shower stall door to the rat pitching a fit on the other side of the shower stall door.

       It was only after I hung up the phone that I started to shake all over. The rat, in its quest for water, had gone down the hall to our bedroom. It had probably been hiding behind the toilet when I was in the bathroom blithely believing it was safe to shower and dress and walk around barefoot in the dark.

      And what if Mittens really did bring in a mouse that night, and this fat rat was a second creature in the house, that came in some way other than via Mittens, then more rats could so the same, and that would mean that the mouse Mittens brought in could still be there too. But there have been no signs of any more rodents in the house since that morning when Mike stood upon the edge of the bathtub in his birthday suit gallantly defending us from the fat rat.

       Since then we have been known to cook occasionally, and there have been no ill smells emanating from the oven.

       That is our saga of the lost mouse in the house and found fat rat!

277 20151004 Lost Mouse in the House