Mice in the House Are Driving Mistress Batty

If you have a squeamish stomach it might be good to stop reading right now. If I didn’t need to go through a catharsis by talking about it, I wouldn’t.
We have caught 16 mice. Cinderella’s only friends were mice and in children’s stories, mice often are the heroes. I like those books, but I am terrified of mice in my house.
This house de-mousing has been going on for more than two weeks. They hang out in the drawer beneath my cook top.
We realized we had mice when our cat’s natural instinct prevailed and he presented us with the evidence. I thought. “Good, the cat got the mouse.”
The next day my heartbeat escalated when I was emptying the dishwasher and discovered a mouse that had not survived the pot-and-pan cycle. I almost didn’t survive that incident; I mistook the mouse’s well washed insides for mashed bananas and cleaned them out with my fingers.
Colleen bought traps, but I was afraid I’d snap my fingers off while I was spreading on the peanut butter. Colleen’s friend, Sara, offered to set them for me.
I went to bed that night believing I lived in a mouseless house or that the mouse was houseless. It was a short-lived feeling. In the morning, the trap we had set was empty. It had no mouse and no bait.
I can’t empty or dispose of the traps once they’ve done their jobs. I can’t even check the drawer to see if the traps have worked. The job has been delegated to anyone I can persuade to do it.
Ten-year-old John is the designated de-mouser. After a few days of this icky job, he said he is not sure he wants to be “the man of the house.” Maureen’s friend, Bridget, who helped baby sit one night, has emptied a trap.
Amy, my college-aged helper, came in one morning, looked in the drawer and confirmed the mouse’s presence. But she said unloading traps wasn’t in her job description.
The plumber did and rest the trap for another catch.
When Machaela and I were returning from an errand Amy yelled from my bedroom window “Kate, watch out,. The cat is chasing a mouse around the family room.”
I hurried in with the idea of dodging the cat-and-mouse game and running right upstairs. En route I had to confront the two of them as the mouse scampered into the dining room, where I was planning to entertain that evening.
Our weekend house guest, Bill, got involved. He set the traps to catch three mice in the two days he was here. Our count was up to eight. I was convinced that had to be the last of them.
My life has been consumed with these mice. A paper fluttered off the counter onto the floor and I flinched because I thought it was a mouse passing by. I got the dictionary to look up a word and opened the book to “capybara,” a 4-foot-long rodent. There even was a picture of it. It looked like a huge mouse.
I couldn’t sleep without dreaming of a mouse invasion or, worse yet, a capybara invasion.
Finally, I thought I had been liberated of them. But once again my celebration ended as quickly as a good mousetrap springs into action.
We couldn’t catch anything in the traps. I summoned all my courage and cleverness to bait the traps. I put the peanut butter on heavily, on lightly, only on the top of the trigger and then only on the bottom.
I called an exterminator. He suggested wadding up a cotton ball with peanut butter on it. I did and it hooked it onto the trap so securely I thought the mouse would never get it off, bit it did every time.
The exterminator also suggested a different brand of trap. I bought five. They worked. I bought eight more the next morning.
I have six left. There are two set in the drawer and four in a bag on the counter. If we use all of these traps I’ll surrender and consider taking mice, mouse traps and peanut butter as income tax deductions next year.
April 16, 1991