The Visitor

Everyone should have at least one experience with mice. We've had more than that. However, I don't recommend more, I think once is plenty.

When we were first married, we lived in the bottom level of a house. The rent was $250/month if that tells you anything. We had a really lovely landlord (honestly, nicest guy ever) who was the town mortician who resided in the funeral home that was right behind the house. Anyways, (that was all extra), our first Christmas, we had a 'visitor.' I thought something was peculiar when I was cleaning our kitchen one afternoon and noticed all of these black specks on the back of my counter. Hmmm... strange I thought. (We had plenty of mice growing up, but I was never the one doing the investigating or killing.) Then, that same day, I was making some pasta, and opened a drawer to get out one of my wooden spoons... there was a perfect little semi-circle nibbled off leaving wood shavings in my drawer. Even stranger... so of course, I called the rodent specialist, my mother. She will tell you horror stories of mice and cockroaches. I honestly hesitate to call b/c I'm afraid of how long she'll elaborate on each story and how many goosebumps I might have by the end. HOWEVER, she does deliver when it comes to knowledge and remedies. So, it was worth the call. "Oh, honey, you have a mouse! Have I ever told you about the time we lived in NC when your dad was in the Navy and...." By this point, I'm just like... SERIOUSLY... just tell me how to get rid of it.

We had our Christmas tree up, and since we had very few ornaments that first Christmas, I had made some gingerbread cookies to hang. We had some hanging too low to the ground apparently. We woke up the next morning to find the whole leg of a gingerbread man nibbled off. We couldn't believe it and we could not stop laughing! The war was on. Jonathan went to buy traps, set it up right under the tree, and then perfectly dangled a gingerbread man right over the trap. We went to bed that night all nervous and giggly (you could tell we were newlyweds... anything would excite us!) and wondering if we'd catch anything. We were not in bed more than 4 minutes when SNAP!... and then SWISH, SWISH, SWISH the tail swinging as it went down to it's death. I laid so still I couldn't move. When it stopped moving, Jonathan said, let's go check it out. I said NO... you go check it out!! End of story!

So, onto present day. Christmas morning Jonathan is making breakfast. He opens the pantry and finds these mini buckeyes that were a gift to Henry from my sister (Sorry Meg...) with a hole in the bag. Some had fallen out. He called Henry over and said, "Henry, did you get into these buckeyes? Wyatt, did you?" Once we assessed they were being completely honest, I felt this familiar feeling of dread come over me. Of course, Jonathan was like a school boy... "I'll get some traps, I'll set them, should we use cheese or PB? We're gonna kill this sucker! C'mon over boys... let me show you what it looks like when you have a mouse in the house." I don't know what happened to my carefree-ness, maybe 10 years of marriage and 3 kids later I lost my ability to be carefree about a mouse. Maybe it was the mouse terds in my pantry and in my skillets. Maybe it was the fact that the darn thing chewed on my Panko breadcrumb bag. Maybe it was that it was Christmas, did it always have to strike on a holiday?

The pictures tell the rest. As you can see, one of us was enjoying the show. Jonathan even decided to make our pictures festive. Thankfully, we have had no 'visitors' since this little guy. Merry Christmas buddy. (By the way, Dad, we really need to finish the trim in that pantry!!)